Canonical has introduced the workshop toolkit, which enables teams to quickly create isolated development environments in Ubuntu for software development, as well as for tackling challenges related to machine learning and AI agents. The environment is specified in a YAML configuration file, allowing for easy replication on any computer. This eliminates the need for developers to spend time configuring dependencies and setting up the environment, enabling them to focus on their goals. The toolkit is available as a snap package and the project code is open source and distributed under the GPLv3 license on GitHub.
The workshop environment is comprised of independent plug-in elements that function as an SDK, which can be shared with other users through the SDK Store. By combining their own SDKs with existing ones, developers can utilize a variety of programming languages, libraries, and tools within the environment. SDKs for Ollama, OpenCode, NVIDIA CUDA, and AMD ROCm are among those provided. For managing the low-level environment, the workshop utilizes the LXD 6.8 container management toolkit.
