VSCode, Dev Containers and Docker

Does this deprecate my vim/gcc/gdb/make (in general "CLI driven workflow") which I have assigned so much time to, to have a nice vender/IDE-independent solution for development?

I'm curious to know the answer in an honest/practically-speaking sense not ideologically.

IMO, the downside of this container/web-app solution is the memory size that all the SDKs would need and this would add up eventually. But I'm not sure this fact alone could win any hearts over that sweet ease-of-entry-to-development.

People were nagging about latency and bloat in webapps and Electron GUIs...yet here we are...even SpaceX's console is a chromium instance.

Re: VSCode, Dev Containers and Docker

#6

Post by shadowgovt » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

ducktective wrote: post #5

Does this deprecate my vim/gcc/gdb/make (in general "CLI driven workflow") which I have assigned so much time to, to have a nice vender/IDE-independent solution for development? I'm curious to know the answer in an honest/practically-speaking sense not ideologically. IMO, the downside of this container/web-app solution is the memory size that all the SDKs would need and this would add up eventually. But I'm not sure…

Probably not, but your vim/gcc/gdb/make flow doesn't scale to other developers. If it works for you, by all means keep using it.

Re: VSCode, Dev Containers and Docker

#7

Post by mhoad » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

I've been doing some playing around with dev containers for a while now and am loving the experience so far. The one thing I am not super clear on however is doing end to end browser based testing in Web Apps. I didn't find a lot of good documentation on this currently. I can't tell if the "correct" solution is to also load something like headless chrome into the Dockerfile and install it manually or go down the path of trying to set things up in a different container with a docker-compose approach.

Re: VSCode, Dev Containers and Docker

#8

Post by onion2k » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

Doing any sort of development with Docker on OSX can be painfully slow if you have a lot of files that change frequently. There are a few projects to improve it but they quite aren't there yet. It's my least favourite aspect of modern web work.

Re: VSCode, Dev Containers and Docker

#9

Post by easton » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

kkapelon wrote: post #4

...or you could use https://codeanywhere.com/ https://gitpod.io/ https://codesandbox.io/ https://codenvy.com/ for a more streamlined experience...

I don't know what could be more streamlined than clicking "Code -> Open in Codespace" on GitHub, and Visual Studio Code renders in your browser, with all of your dotfiles set and dependencies loaded to mess around with something.

(GitPod does a similar thing where you can append the URL to gitpod.io, but they can't use the VSCode extension marketplace).

Re: VSCode, Dev Containers and Docker

#10

Post by marcus_holmes » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

I understand this can be done. And this post explains how it's done. I still don't get why it should be done?

What's the advantage of running your dev environment in a container?