November 30, 2023 - See https://github.com/devcontainers/template-starter and https://github.com/devcontainers/feature-starter for information on creating your own! - vscode-dev-containers/containers/ubuntu/.devcontainer/devcontainer.json at main · microsoft/vscode-dev-containers

To reference a Feature from this repository, add the desired Features to a devcontainer.json. Each Feature has a README.md that shows how to reference the Feature and which options are available for that Feature. The example below installs the go and docker-in-docker declared in the ./src directory of this repository. See the relevant Feature's README for supported options. "name": "my-project-devcontainer", "image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/base:ubuntu", // Any generic, debian-based image.

"documentationURL": "https://github.com/devcontainers/features/tree/main/src/node", "description": "Installs Node.js, nvm, yarn, pnpm, and needed dependencies.", "options": { "version": { "type": "string", "proposals": [ "lts", "latest", "none", "22", "20" ], "default": "lts", "description": "Select or enter a Node.js version to install" }, "nodeGypDependencies": { "type": "boolean", "default": true, "description": "Install dependencies to compile native node modules (node-gyp)?"

November 3, 2021 - While you can edit your devcontainer.json file by hand to add a list of extension IDs, you can also right-click on any extension in the Extensions view and select Add to devcontainer.json. If a base image or Feature configures an extension that you do not want installed in your dev container, you can opt out by listing the extension with a minus sign.

The focus of devcontainer.json is to describe how to enrich a container for the purposes of development rather than acting as a multi-container orchestrator format. Instead, container orchestrator formats can be referenced when needed to manage multiple containers and their lifecycles.

November 3, 2021 - You may also use the "features" property in the devcontainer.json to install tools and languages from a pre-defined set of Features or even your own.

January 21, 2023 - Like dev containers, Features only work for Linux (with most features specifically written to support Debian and/or Ubuntu). Behind the scenes, a Feature is just a folder with at least two files: ... The installation point entry script. This code is run during build time to create a layer in the dev container image. This must be executable within the dev container. This is executed as root during the build. ... Metadata about the feature, including options or settings that would normally be configured in devcontainer.json.

A new .devcontainer/devcontainer.json file will open in the editor. The file will contain some initial properties, including a features object to which you can add new tools, libraries, or runtimes.

Feature metadata is captured by a devcontainer-feature.json file in the root folder of the feature.

devcontainer.json allows you to reuse certain predefined features within your configuration. You can think of features as reusable Dockerfile parts that will be merged into your Dockerfile upon creation. This makes it easy to reuse functionality such as docker-in-docker or install extra tooling ...

September 24, 2025 - It allows you to open any folder ... A devcontainer.json file in your project tells VS Code how to access (or create) a development container with a well-defined tool and runtime stack....

Build a container image from a devcontainer.json file that includes dev container features

October 19, 2023 - For those not familiar, the “bookworm” part of “java:17-jdk-bookworm” clarifies which version of Ubuntu should be running in the container. Despite this example only illustrating development in Quarkus, it is decently general-purpose and fairly straightforward to extend or transform to meet your needs. There is one interesting major feature that is worth mentioning, in case you have more complex local-development requirements: the build section in the devcontainer.json file supports specifying a docker-compose.yml file as well.

October 11, 2024 - Some extensions are automatically installed by features, but there's no problem with duplication. ... Many of you might be using a lot of extensions when utilizing VSCode. You might think, "I can't list extensions for each devcontainer" (I thought so). Here's good news for you. In the settings.json of VSCode, if you define the dev.containers.defaultExtensions item as an array and write the extension IDs there, the extensions you always use will be installed from here without needing to write them in devcontainer.json.

The CLI can take a devcontainer.json and create and configure a dev container from it. It allows for prebuilding dev container configurations using a CI or DevOps product like GitHub Actions. It can detect and include dev container features and apply them at container runtime, and run lifecycle scripts like postCreateCommand, providing more power than a plain docker build and docker run.

All available options for a Feature should be declared in the devcontainer-feature.json.

"description": "A simple Ubuntu container with Git and other common utilities installed.", "documentationURL": "https://github.com/devcontainers/templates/tree/main/src/ubuntu", "publisher": "Dev Container Spec Maintainers", "licenseURL": "https://github.com/devcontainers/templates/blob/main/LICENSE", "options": { "imageVariant": { "type": "string", "description": "Ubuntu version (use ubuntu-22.04 or ubuntu-24.04 on local arm64/Apple Silicon):", "proposals": [ "noble", "jammy" ], "default": "noble" } }, "platforms": ["Any"], "optionalPaths": [ ".github/*" ] }

March 21, 2021 - RUN apt-get update && export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive \ && apt-get -y install --no-install-recommends \ vim git libzip-dev unzip fzf software-properties-common # Install PHP modules RUN docker-php-ext-install zip # Install gh RUN apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-key C99B11DEB97541F0 && \ apt-add-repository -u https://cli.github.com/packages && \ apt update && \ apt install gh · This is just to show an example, clearly your packages and dependencies are likely to be different. This settings file let’s you configure VS Code and the way the container runs. It’s named devcontainer.json and is also dropped into the .devcontainer folder in your project.

A collection of Dev Container Features managed by Dev Container spec maintainers. See https://github.com/devcontainers/feature-starter to publish your own - features/src/python/devcontainer-feature.json at main · devcontainers/features

To make the changes take effect in existing codespaces, you will need to pull the updates to the devcontainer.json file into your codespace, then rebuild the container for the codespace. For more information, see Introduction to dev containers. ... To add features in VS Code while you are working locally, and not connected to a codespace, you must have the "Dev Containers" extension installed and enabled.