Devcontainers (short for “development containers”) are a technology used in software development to create consistent and isolated development environments
devcontainers is a full-featured development environment running inside container (i.e. docker)
It allows you to use a container as a full-featured development environment
It can be used to run an application, to separate tools, libraries, or runtimes needed for working with a codebase
Dev containers can be run locally or remotely, in a private or public cloud, in a variety of supporting tools and editors
Why to use devcontainers?
Provides simplified, un-orchestrated single container coding environment
Allows developers to define and share the development environment configuration using a standard set of files (commonly a “devcontainer.json” file).
Share and reuse full-featured coding environments
Consistency: All developers working on the project can use the same environment, ensuring consistent behavior and eliminating the “it works on my machine” problem.
Isolation: Development containers are isolated from the host system, reducing the risk of conflicts with other software installed on the machine.
Reproducibility: The configuration files make it easy to recreate the exact development environment, simplifying collaboration and onboarding new team members.
Portability: Developers can work on their projects seamlessly across different machines, cloud environments, or even CI/CD pipelines.