Utilizing dev containers
When you’re utilizing dev containers as a part of your customary toolchain, you’ll be able to create a library of options that may be rapidly added to your container definitions. You may customise off-the-shelf containers or rapidly construct a brand new definition for a brand new mission, treating options as constructing blocks that sit on prime of a typical base container that’s been outlined for a particular stack.
The essential means of constructing a dev container makes loads of sense. It’s a top-down strategy, which wants to begin with architects and dev leads agreeing on a mission stack. You may then discover a base platform picture, say .Web, within the VS Code container gallery. Upon getting that, you customise it to your mission, including new instruments by modifying the devcontainer.json in VS Code and by including predefined options. As soon as the container is able to use, deploy it and the required VS Code instruments to your improvement crew.
Your native container host must be operating Docker or not less than have a Docker-compliant CLI on prime of its engine. The CLI is essential right here, because the dev container works by it fairly than needing direct entry to your container host. That’s each a profit and a disadvantage: There’s no dependency on APIs and even on Docker itself. So long as a container setting helps the Docker CLI, you should use it together with your dev containers. Nonetheless, if it doesn’t, you’ll be able to’t. Which means there are points with different container engines, corresponding to Podman, which solely assist a subset of the Docker CLI. In fact, as dev containers is an open supply mission, there’s ongoing work to assist different container engines, and you can also make requests or submit code by way of GitHub.