devcontainers4all 0.0.4

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devcontainers4all: Devcontainers without an IDE

At the moment the only supported devcontainer format is the Visual Studio Code devcontainer.json manifest and .devcontainer directory structure.

The only container technology supported is docker, but podman is on its way.

To use such devcontainer, use the d4a command:

$ d4a --help
Usage: dc [OPTIONS]

  Manage the devcontainer

Options:
  --repository PATH  The repository checkout to mount in the devcontainer
  --location PATH    The location of the devcontainer definition
  --help             Show this message and exit.

example: d4a --location ~/location/to/.devcontainer/ --repository ~/Sources/my_repo

Where locaiton is the directory where the devcontainer manifest and Dockerfile are present. It need to contain at least a VSC-compatible devcontainer.json and a working Dockerfile.

The manifest needs to contain all the build-args, and all the environment variables required for the build. Note: at the moment only constant are possible for build-args and environmental variables value, even though the VSC manifest supports other variable-expansion syntaxes.

It will use the location as build directory and will create container image from it. This image will be executed, the repository directory will be bind-mounted under /workspace within the container, and the post-command in the manifest will be executed.

At this point a shell will be available, within the container.

Visual Studio Code DevContainers

Ultimately the aim is to fully support https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/devcontainerjson-reference, with the exceptions of Visual Studio Code specific properties, which would apply only in a VSC environment.

Image or Dockerfile specific properties

At the moment the following limited format is supported (copied by VSC reference):

Property	type	Description
build.dockerfile	str	Required when using a Dockerfile. The location of a Dockerfile that defines the contents of the container. The path is relative to the devcontainer.json file. You can find Dockerfiles for different runtimes in the vscode-dev-containers repository.
build.args	str	A set of name-value pairs containing Docker image build arguments that should be passed when building a Dockerfile. Environment and pre-defined variables may be referenced in the values. Defaults to not set. For example: "build": { "args": { "MYARG": "MYVALUE", "MYARGFROMENVVAR": "${localEnv:VARIABLE_NAME}" } }

Lifecycle scripts

Property	type	Description
postCreateCommand	str, array	This command is the last of three that finalizes container setup when a dev container is created. It happens after updateContentCommand and once the dev container has been assigned to a user for the first time.