Docker support, Rust, seamless branching and much more

Hello everyone 👋🏾

Hope you have had an amazing start to your year!
Here at CodeSandbox, we have! With a lot of announcements like Docker, Rust support, and others that you might have already seen in our Blog.

Let’s dive right into our biggest updates!

Docker support ⛴️

We deployed native Docker support in CodeSandbox!

You can now add a Dockerfile to the .codesandbox folder, restart the branch and you’ll be in the environment of the Dockerfile. This means that you can now use CodeSandbox to code in new languages 🤯

We also give you root access inside the container, so you can run things like apt install htop.

Don’t miss our Docker starters and our walkthrough video.

Rust Support 🦀

CodeSandbox now officially supports Rust! This update allows you to spin up a Rust development environment within 2 seconds, with IntelliSense support and the ability to open the environment in iOS or VS Code.

Check out our Rust & Serde template and our Rust starter! Happy coding, Rustaceans! 🎉

Environment variables

We introduced environment variable support on Cloud Sandboxes. This is very useful for creating variables and secrets in your project, such as project-specific settings or access tokens for APIs. Can’t find them? See our short video!

Private NPM Registry support for Cloud Sandboxes

Now, teams can use their private npm registry (configured in their team settings) inside Cloud Sandboxes. This feature is only available for Team Pro subscribers.

💡 The sandbox has to be private for this feature to be enabled.

Seamless branching & forking

You asked for it, we shipped it! When you are in a protected branch or sandbox, you can just start coding—in the background, we will seamlessly branch the repo or fork the sandbox for you ✨

Sandpack updates

Experimental Sandpack layout on embeds

To gradually deprecate some v1 dependencies and support our new technologies, we have released experimental support for a new type of embedding that uses Sandpack. You can manually test it by adding the &sandpack=experimental tag to the iFrame’s URL.

New resizing feature

Sandpack now has a new resizing feature that allows for a more powerful code editor and preview experience. Perfect for responsive layouts, long pieces of code, and more. See it in action!

Support for code actions

Now, CodeSandbox has built-in support for code actions that are created by LSPs. This is useful for small things (like adding imports) but can also handle big operations (moving given code to a function). Plus, it is also available for Rust!

Several smaller fixes and updates

As usual, we also took some time to go over bug fixes and UX improvements to make sure that CodeSandbox gives you a smooth and powerful developer experience.

Community updates

Last, but not least, we have kept improving our templates and making them more accessible to everyone.
So, we now redirect several of our .new domains to cloud sandbox templates. Try it with:

• https://vite.react.new
• https://svelte.new
• https://gatsby.new
• https://js.new
• https://nodejs.new
• https://vue.new

We are incredibly excited about these updates and grateful for all the positive feedback we have received from our users. Thank you so much for your support ❤️

Yours,

The CodeSandbox Team