Today, devcontainer.json includes scenario specific properties for working without a container orchestrator (by directly referencing an image or Dockerfile) and for using Docker Compose as a simple multi-container orchestrator.

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.

November 3, 2021 - 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....

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 ...

By default, the latest version of the feature will be used. To choose a different version, or configure other options for the feature, expand the properties listed under "Options" to view the available values, then add the options by manually editing the object in your devcontainer.json file.

src - A collection of subfolders, each declaring a Feature. Each subfolder contains at least a devcontainer-feature.json and an install.sh script.

September 15, 2022 - What if my Feature should only install after another one? As a Feature author, you may find that your Feature should install before or after other Features. In your devcontainer-feature.json, you can use the installsAfter property to list Features that should execute before it.

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

February 5, 2026 - Open the devcontainer.json file and inside the features section, add the reference to the local Feature using auto-completion.

February 5, 2026 - Open the devcontainer.json file and inside the features section, add the reference to the local Feature using auto-completion.

{ "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#", "description": "Defines a dev container", "allowComments": true, "allowTrailingCommas": false, "definitions": { "devContainerCommon": { "type": "object", "properties": { "name": { "type": "string", "description": "A name for the dev container which can be displayed to the user." }, "features": { "type": "object", "description": "Features to add to the dev container.", "additionalProperties": true }, "overrideFeatureInstallOrder": { "type": "array", "description": "Array consisting of the Feature id (without the semantic version) of Features in the order the user wants them to be installed.", "items": { "type": "string" } }, "forwardPorts": { "type": "array", "description": "Ports that are forwarded from the container to the local machine.

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/node/devcontainer-feature.json at main · devcontainers/features

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.

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/docker-in-docker/devcontainer-feature.json at main · devcontainers/features

"description": "Development Container Features Metadata (devcontainer-feature.json).

{ "features": { "ghcr.io/coder/devcontainer-features/code-server:1": { "port": 13337, "host": "0.0.0.0" } } } When you modify your devcontainer.json, you need to rebuild the container for changes to take effect.

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/java/devcontainer-feature.json at main · devcontainers/features

By default, the latest version of the feature will be used. To choose a different version, or configure other options for the feature, expand the properties listed under "Options" to view the available values, then add the options by manually editing the object in your devcontainer.json file.

January 21, 2023 - 1"feature-id": { 2 // options, as JSON key-value pairs 3} The feature-id can be in one of three general formats: A reference to an OCI registry (which covers most of the major container registries). These are in the form registry/namespace/repository:version. For example, ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/go:1 is using the GHCR.io registry, has the tenant namespace devcontainers, has the repository path features/go, and is version 1.