Devcontainer for Nix

VSCode devcontainer for Nix

This devcontainer contains Nix and hooks to install nix recipe as devcontainers. This is the base image that can be used to extend your own devcontainer based on nix.

How to use

This repo contains devcontainer templates to make it easy to generate devcontainer configurations. If you prefer a more hands on approach, you can also check out sample configuration described in the next section

In your own repo, simply copy our .devcontainer directory and extend as necessary using the provided files that directory:

default.nix replace with your nix recipe. You can also include recipes in other repo by including it in this recipe
Dockerfile if you need to extend the image and include several files here
docker-compose.yml if you need to extend docker-compose recipe to do/mount extra things for your devcontainer
devcontainer.json if you need to include custom settings like extensions, etc.

To generate these files using devcontainer CLI, you first need to install the CLI. It is usually packaged along VS Code's Remote Containers extensions tools. So you probably have it already.

The template definition and available options is located in the template source directory

From your own repository directory, create a .devcontainer directory with the options JSON file

mkdir -p .devcontainer
touch .devcontainer/args.json

The file args.json contains the options you want to activate and pass to devcontainer CLI. This is an example to use Direnv and Flake:

{
    "useDirenv": "true",
    "useFlake": "false"
}

Generate the devcontainers file using CLI, and the template package ghcr.io/lucernae/devcontainer-nix/nix:1:

devcontainer templates apply -t ghcr.io/lucernae/devcontainer-nix/nix:1 --workspace-folder . -a "$(cat .devcontainer/args.json)"

Once the files are generated, you can use VS Code's command "Reopen in Container" (available from the command palette: CTRL+SHIFT+P), or devcontainer up command to test the devcontainer creations:

devcontainer up --workspace-folder .

Currently available devcontainer samples

default: minimal example on how to use the devcontainer with direnv
development: my preferred way of using GitHub Codespace to bootstrap this own repo's development
home-manager: (TBD) use flake URI to fetch your home-manager config to setup the devcontainer
nixos: use a codespace template to bootstrap a NixOS as a container. You can then use NixOS capabilities, such as systemd services definitions, NixOS modules, etc.

Development

This repository mainly contains Docker recipe to build the devcontainer image.

Required tech stack:

Nix
Docker/Docker Compose
Bash

Building the image:

make build

Running the stack locally:

make up

Supporting and Contributing

If you like this project, show your love. Even feedbacks are most appreciated.

Sponsoring

You can sponsor this project to help me experiment with the codespace, since I mostly run out of codespace storage quota pretty quickly. The storage was mostly used when you are experimenting with lots of packages that fills out Nix store. The final image itself is less than 1GB. By sponsoring, I can avoid running low of storage quotas.

Contributing

There are no clear guideline yet. Since this is a template, you can contribute your own recipes, and I can publish it as a branch so people can use it quickly. Do you have some cool examples on how to use Nix, Nix flakes, or Home Manager? Feel free to publish it here. You might be helping someone.

Do you have some problem with Nix? You can even use this template so people can see and try out your configuration to debug the problem.

Not able to sponsor or contribute?

No worries, spreading the words or starring the repo might help as well. Thank you!

References/Remarks

Thanks to Arion. I built the image in Nix using this tools.
Thanks to Nix Community who helps and provides docs/articles for introverts like me.