devcontainers without VS Code?

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Let's say that for some reason I don't want to launch VSC to get a devcontainer shell running, but I still want all of that devcontainer goodness without rewriting all of the configuration files. There's a devcontainer CLI, but at the moment, the only options available are open (VSC, connected to the container) and build (which builds the image, in the use case that many people are sharing the same devcontainer environment).

Ideally, there'd be a third option devcontainer shell which does all the build, spin up and connection work that is done inside VSC, but the just execs to the running container.

visual-studio-code
1 Answers

The .devcontainer folder contains a devcontainer.json file. In it, if you're using docker-compose, there will be a dockerComposeFile key with an array of docker-compose files, loaded in order. You can do the same with a command such as docker-compose -f first-compose-file.yml -f second-compose-file.yml.

That same folder usually has its own docker-compose.yml file. You will notice it declares your main service and usually sets up a volume to share between the host and the container (useful to work inside the container).

There are other interesting keys in devcontainer.json such as forwardPorts, remoteUser or postCreateCommand. You should be able to set up most of them in your docker-compose file (dev stuff should go into the .devcontainer/ one). The post-create command can be run with docker compose exec SERVICENAME COMMAND.

I don't know if there's a command to detect .devcontainer files and pick up the right settings, but it should not be hard to write one.

user_2071190
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