Devcontainers allow you to have the experience of a local dev environment within a containerized environment. This gives you the portability of docker - you can run a dev environment on any OS or even in the cloud (through Github codespaces), but your editor will look and act like you have the codebase set up locally.

Installation

• Install docker on your machine. Follow the official guide on docker.com.
• Install an editor that supports devcontainers.
  • VS Code with the Dev Containers extension is a good choice.
• Create a fork of the repo
• Clone repo using https - git clone https://github.com/[USER_NAME]/lobsters.git
  • https is strongly recommended due to how devcontainers handle authentcation with GitHub
• Change to the lobsters directory - cd lobsters OR code -r lobsters if you're using VS Code.
• Copy the database config - cp config/database.yml.sample config/database.yml
• Reopen the code within the devcontainer
  • For VS Code - [CMD+Shift+P] then select "Dev Containers: Reopen in Container"
• Change the credentials:
  • Create a new terminal tab
  • Run VISUAL="code --wait" bin/rails credentials:edit
    • Copy content from config/credentials.yml.enc.sample and paste it in the editor
• Run bin/setup
• Create the fake data by running rails fake_data
  • Note: this will take 2-5 minutes
• Start the server with rails s -b 0.0.0.0
• Confirm the server is running by navigating to http://0.0.0.0:3000

Common errors

Solution: Redo step "Change the credentials":

Solution:

• Run rails db:drop
• Run rails db:setup

Docker container starts, but devcontainer hangs forever and never attaches "Close the remote conection" and then "Reopen in container" - this is an issue where VS Code is trying to attach before the devcontainer is truly ready.

Setting up Git

• Share your git credentials with all devcontainers you use. or
• run gh auth login to generate credentials within the container

Running tests

• Run bundle exec rspec