if I understood correctly you cloned a repository directly into a container volume using the "Clone Repository in Container Volume..." option.
Assuming the local volume is still there you should still be able to recover the uncommitted changes you saved inside it.
First make sure the volume is still there: Unless you named it something in particular, it is usually named <your-repository-name>-<hex-unique-id>. Use this docker command to list the volume and their labels:
docker volume ls --format "{{.Name}}:\t{{.Labels}}"
Notice I included the Labels property, this should help you locate the right volume which should have a label that looks like vsch.local.repository=<your-repository-clone-url>. You can even use the filter mode of the previous command if you remember the exact URL used for cloning in the first place, like this:
docker volume ls --filter label=vsch.local.repository=<your-repository-clone-url>
If you still struggle to locate the exact volume, you can find more about the docker volume ls command in the Official docker documentation and also use docker volume inspect to obtain detailed information about volumes.
Once you know the name of the volume, open an empty folder on your local machine and create the necessary devcontainer file .devcontainer/devcontainer.json. Choose the image most suitable to your development environment, but in order to recover your work by performing a simple git commit any image with git installed should do (even those who are not specifically designed to be devcontainers, here I am using Alpine because it occupies relatively little space).
Then set the workspaceFolder and workspaceMount variables to mount your volume in your new devcontainer, like this:
{
"image": "mcr.microsoft.com/vscode/devcontainers/base:0-alpine-3.13",
"workspaceFolder": "/workspaces/<your-repository-name>",
"workspaceMount": "type=volume,source=<your-volume-name>,target=/worskpaces"
}
If you need something more specific there you can find exhaustive documentation about the possible devcontainer configuration in the devcontainer.json reference page.
You can now use VSCode git tools and even continue the work from where you left the last time you "persisted" your file contents.
This is, by the way, the only way I know to work with VSCode devcontainers if you are using Docker through TCP or SSH with a non-local context (a.k.a. the docker VM is not running on your local machine), since your local file system is not directly available to the docker machine.
If you look at the container log produced when you ask VSCode to spin up a devcontainer for you, you will find the actual docker run command executed by the IDE to be something like along this line:
docker run ... type=bind,source=<your-local-folder>,target=/workspaces/<your-local-folder-or-workspace-basename>,consistency=cached ...
meaning that if you omit to specify the workspaceMount variable in devcontainer.json, VSCode will actually do it for you like if you were to write this:
// file: .devcontainer/devcontainer.json
{
// ...
"workspaceFolder": "/worspaces/${localWorkspaceFolderBasename}",
"workspaceMount": "type=bind,source=${localWorkspaceFolder},target=/worspaces/${localWorkspaceFolderBasename},consistency=cached"}
// ...
}
Where ${localWorkspaceFolder} and ${localWorkspaceFolderBasename} are dynamic variables avaialble in the VSCode devcontainer.json context.
Alternatively
If you just want to commit the changes and throw away the volume afterwards you can simply spin up a docker container with git installed (even the tiny Alpine linux one should do):
docker run --rm -it --name repo-recovery --mount type=volume,source=<your-volume-name>,target=/workspaces --workdir /workspaces/<your-repository-name> mcr.microsoft.com/vscode/devcontainers/base:0-alpine-3.13 /bin/bash
Then, if you are familiar with the git command line tool, you can git add and git commit all your modifications. Alternatively you can run the git commands directly instead of manually using a shell inside the container:
docker run --rm -t --name repo-recovery --mount type=volume,source=<your-volume-name>,target=/workspaces --workdir /workspaces/<your-repository-name> mcr.microsoft.com/vscode/devcontainers/base:0-alpine-3.13 /bin/bash -c "git add . && git commit -m 'Recovered from devcontainer'"
You can find a full list of devcontainers provided by MS in the VSCode devcontainers repository .
Devcontainers are an amazing tool to help you keep your environment clean and flexible, I hope this answer understood and helped you solve your problem and expand a bit your knowledge about this instrument.
Cheers
