Development Container Features

Development Container 'Features'
A set of simple and reusable Features. Quickly add a language/tool/CLI to a development container.

'Features' are self-contained units of installation code and development container configuration. Features are designed to install atop a wide-range of base container images.

Missing a CLI or language in your otherwise perfect container image? Add the relevant Feature to the features property of a devcontainer.json. A tool supporting the dev container specification is required to build a development container.

You may learn about Features at containers.dev, which is the website for the dev container specification.

Usage

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.
"features": {
    "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/go:1": {
        "version": "1.18"
    },
    "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/docker-in-docker:1": {
        "version": "latest",
        "moby": true
    }
}

The :latest version annotation is added implicitly if omitted. To pin to a specific package version (example), append it to the end of the Feature. Features follow semantic versioning conventions, so you can pin to a major version :1, minor version :1.0, or patch version :1.0.0 by specifying the appropriate label.

"features": {
    "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/go:1.0.0": {
        "version": "1.18"
    }
}

The devcontainer CLI reference implementation (or a supporting tool) can be used to build a project's dev container declaring Features.

git clone <my-project-with-devcontainer>
devcontainer build --workspace-folder <path-to-my-project-with-devcontainer>

Repo Structure

.
├── README.md
├── src
│   ├── dotnet
│   │   ├── devcontainer-feature.json
│   │   └── install.sh
│   ├── go
│   │   ├── devcontainer-feature.json
│   │   └── install.sh
|   ├── ...
│   │   ├── devcontainer-feature.json
│   │   └── install.sh
├── test
│   ├── dotnet
│   │   └── test.sh
│   ├── go
|   |   ├── scenarios.json
|   |   ├── test_scenario_1.json
│   |   └── test.sh
|   ├── ...
│   │   └── test.sh
...

src - A collection of subfolders, each declaring a Feature. Each subfolder contains at least a devcontainer-feature.json and an install.sh script.
test - Mirroring src, a folder-per-feature with at least a test.sh script. The devcontainer CLI will execute these tests in CI.

Contributions

Creating your own collection of Features

The Feature distribution specification outlines a pattern for community members and organizations to self-author Features in repositories they control.

A template repo devcontainers/feature-template and GitHub Action are available to help bootstrap self-authored Features.

We are eager to hear your feedback on self-authoring! Please provide comments and feedback on spec issue #70.

Contributing to this repository