What are Dev Containers?

Dev containers are isolated environments that encapsulate all dependencies, tools, and configurations required for a development project.

Benefits of Using Dev Containers

• Consistent Development Environments
• Simplified Onboarding
• Isolation of Development Environments
• Integration with CI/CD Pipelines
• Cross-platform Development
• Remote Development (e.g. Codespaces)

Key Features

• There's a great cli
• You get your ci setup for free
• VS, VS Code, and IntelliJ have good extensions
(It's the killer feature in VS Code imo)
• Great for trying new langs

Setting Up a Dev Container

            {
                "name": "Debian w/ Ruby",
                "image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/base:bullseye",
                "features": {
                    "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/ruby:1": {
                        "version": "3.1"
                    }
                }
            }
            

            {
                "name": "Ubuntu w/ Python",
                "image": "ubuntu:latest",
                "features": {
                    "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/python:1": {
                        "version": "3.12"
                    }
                }
            }
            

Let's take a quick peek at some more complex examples.

• Go
• Rust
• Python
• Node