⚠️ NOTE: This functionality is in PREVIEW. Please note it is subject to (heavy) modification!

Development container features Template

To create your own remote dev container features, use this repo as a template. This repo contains two example "features" called helloworld and color.

These features can then be declared in your devcontainer.json file for use in the Remote-Containers extension or GitHub Codespaces.

Features In This Repo (Directory)

helloworld

This is a sample feature that prints the greeting option you pass to it when invoking the hello program in a terminal.

color

Prints your favorite color (in that color) when you run the program color in your terminal.

Note: Your favorite color can only be green, red, or gold.

Release Flow

Push a tag (eg v0.0.1) to your repo, which will trigger the deploy-features action in this repo's deploy-features.yml workflow file.

Assets will be compressed and added as a release artifact with the name devcontainer-features.tgz.

Include these features in your project's devcontainer

To include your feature in a project's devcontainer, provide the following features like so.

"image": "mcr.microsoft.com/vscode/devcontainers/base",
features: {
    "<OWNER>/<REPO>/helloworld": {
        "greeting": "Hello!"
    },
    "<OWNER>/<REPO>/color": {
        "color": "green" 
    }
}

• Where OWNER is the repo owner (for this template, microsoft).
• Where REPO is the repo name (for this template, dev-container-features-template)

Providing no version implies the latest release's artifacts. To supply a tag as a version, use the following notation.

features: {
    "<OWNER>/<REPO>/[email protected]": {
        greeting: "Hello!"
    }
}

Adding your own features

This functionality is in Preview (and subject to change!) Please give it a try, and provide feedback along the way.

To add your own features to this template, follow these steps:

1. Customize the devcontainer-features.json, adding in another feature object to the array. For an idea of what attributes can be provided in this preview, check out the features definition on vscode-dev-containers. Further documentation will be forthcoming as this functionality moves out of preview!

2. The install.sh script is the entrypoint that the Remote-Containers extension, the devcontainer-cli, and Codespaces will use to install your features.

If a feature is declared in your devcontainer.json, the _BUILD_ARG_<FEATURE_NAME> will be set to true. If you supply any options, those are exposed as _BUILD_ARG_<FEATURE_NAME>_<OPTION_NAME>.

Always source ./devcontainer-features.env at the top of your install.sh script, that's the file the tooling will write all the environment variables to, and is useful for the author (you!) to use in your install script(s).

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Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.opensource.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., status check, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.

Trademarks

This project may contain trademarks or logos for projects, products, or services. Authorized use of Microsoft trademarks or logos is subject to and must follow Microsoft's Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship. Any use of third-party trademarks or logos are subject to those third-party's policies.