Containerised Development in VS Code

Visual Studio Code will detect a devcontainer.json file and prompt to reopen in container.

In a dev container project, the header bar will display

Dev Container: <project> @ <image>

For example, opening this project (devenv) in a container based on the desktop linux image results in:

Clone-outside-container

This is the recommended approach. It allows merge of user tooling.

NB This puts the code on the real hard drive, which may be considered undesirable.

1. Clone the repo
2. Apply additions/alterations to devenv.yaml and regenerate devcontainer files (ie devenv generate)
3. Open your project in VSCode.
4. A toast popup (below right) will invite you to reopen in a container.
5. A subtle dropdown on the header bar will invite you to choose the devcontainer.json file explicitly. Choose
   1. .devcontainer/shared/devcontainer.json for the shared project settings
   2. .devcontainer/user/devcontainer.json for the user-specific project settings
6. The container will be created and will mount the existing checkout.
7. Close and restart of these instructions will detect the existing container and re-use it, which could be a gotcha.

Clone-inside-container

No merge of user tooling.

1. F1 (Actions), “clone”, provide the repo address, and run the action.

Logging

The “remote dev server” process used to run the project environment inside the container stores its logging in /home/vscode/.vscode-server/data/logs/ inside the container with a datestamped directory.

If it is unresponsive, the logging can still be viewed via docker:

docker exec -it <container> bash -c 'find /home/vscode/.vscode-server/data/logs/*/remoteagent.log | tail -1 | xargs tail -f'