Unexpected behaviour when using kubernetes component in Devfile

[rajivnathan]

Description

I thought I would be able to deploy an additional pod as part of workspace creation if I used a Devfile with kubernetes components but it does not appear to be working as I expected. I was expecting to see the workspace pod and an additional pod that was defined by the reference. However, there is only a single pod that contains both the container specified in the kubernetes component and the workspace containers (che-machine-exec and theia-ide).

The single workspace pod does have the container that was specified in the reference, so the Che server does appear to be reading the reference, just not deploying the kubernetes resources according to the reference. Is there a way to deploy a pod/deployment alongside the workspace pod?

Reproduction Steps

This can be reproduced using the che-in-che Devfile: https://github.com/eclipse/che/blob/master/devfile.yaml
(Note: It needs to be updated to use alias instead of name until #13228 is merged. Can use <che_host>/f?url=https://github.com/rajivnathan/che/tree/cheDevfile to reproduce)

It contains a kubernetes component with a reference to .che-dev.yaml which has a single Pod and two PersistentVolumeClaims.

I tried specifying a Deployment instead of Pod, but that also included the container in the workspace pod instead of its own pod.

Platform and version:
Deployed Che from master branch on to Kubernetes using helm chart in deploy/kubernetes/helm/che

[rajivnathan]

Spoke to @l0rd about this issue and he mentioned this is currently the expected behaviour due to limitations relating to Kubernetes volumes and access from pods outside of the workspace pod.

However, there has been some discussion about providing that capability in another issue: #11476