Utilizing dev containers
When you’re utilizing dev containers as a part of your normal toolchain, you may create a library of options that may be shortly added to your container definitions. You’ll be able to customise off-the-shelf containers or shortly construct a brand new definition for a brand new mission, treating options as constructing blocks that sit on prime of a normal base container that’s been outlined for a particular stack.
The essential technique of constructing a dev container makes loads of sense. It’s a top-down method, which wants to start out with architects and dev leads agreeing on a mission stack. You’ll be able to then discover a base platform picture, say .Internet, within the VS Code container gallery. After 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 growth group.
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 moderately 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 surroundings helps the Docker CLI, you need to use it along with your dev containers. Nevertheless, if it doesn’t, you may’t. Which means there are points with various container engines, equivalent to Podman, which solely help a subset of the Docker CLI. In fact, as dev containers is an open supply mission, there’s ongoing work to help different container engines, and you may make requests or submit code by way of GitHub.
