Use of VS Code's Development Container

[astroesteban]

About

Hey y'all. I've been going through the tutorials for F' using the Visual Studio Code's development container feature. It's nothing out of this world but I thought I'd share it in case any newbies like me are out there and just want a simple way to get up and running with F'.

You can find out more info about devcontainers here.
Here is a great YouTube playlist from Microsoft on development containers: https://youtu.be/61M2takIKl8

Basically they allow you to use a Docker container as your development environment. VS Code automatically recognizes the .devcontainer folder and mounts your project into the container in the background. It's great for newbies to get setup and running as well as creating a common development environment for everyone.

I based the devcontainer on the already existing Dockerfile so that there aren't any duplicate Dockerfiles floating around.

With this environment you can build F', run the HTML GUI, and I even went ahead and installed the autocompletion for the CLI tools.

Check it out here: https://github.com/astroesteban/fprime/tree/feature/add-devcontainer/.devcontainer

Setup

In order to use dev containers you will need:

• Docker
• Visual Studio Code
• Remote Development Extension Pack

Install Docker and Visual Studio Code then in VS Code install the Remote Development Extension Pack. The extension pack will allow you to develop using SSH or, for our purpose, a dev container.

Next, all you need to do is copy the .devcontainer folder to your F' fork and then open the repo in VS Code.

Once you have the repo opened in VS Code you should see a pop-up in the bottom right:

If you don't see that you can click on the magenta icon in the bottom left:

and then click on "Reopen in Container"

VS Code will build and start the container. Then it will mount your repo as a cached volume inside of the container so any changes made in the devcontainer are to your host repo.

You should end up with a bottom half that looks like this:

[Joshua-Anderson]

That's really cool! I usually spin up a vm for my linux testing but this could be a great alternative.

[astroesteban]

Spinning up a VM was my go-to but recently I've found that VS Code + DevContainers have been great at just quickly getting up and running with a project. Plus I don't need to create new SSH keys for every VM or copy them over. It's pretty cool stuff coming out of the VS Code team.

[astroesteban]

Updated the discussion with setup info in case anyone comes across this in the future and wants to copy it.

[ChangoBuitrago]

Hi @astroesteban, thanks for the above suggestion, looks great. Unfortunately, the check it out link is not working at the moment. It throughs a 404 error. It could just be a permissions issue (https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-server@3.0/rest/overview/troubleshooting).
TIA.

[ChangoBuitrago]

Hi @astroesteban. On the contrary, thank you for taking the time to reshare this. I'll give it a try ASAP and let you know.
Hope you had a great holiday.
Cheers!

[astroesteban]

Thanks @ChangoBuitrago! I decided to create my own Dockerfile in .devcontainer instead of using the existing Dockerfile in F'. Having my own gives me greater control over what I install in my dev environment and I can also easily select between Ubuntu 20.04 or 18.04. Everything else is the same as the existing Dockerfile including the virtual environment setup and package installations.

[ChangoBuitrago]

You are welcome @astroesteban. I did the same but upgraded the existent Dockerfile. However, even though I managed to have the whole system up and running (exposing IPs, Ports, etc), I finally couldn't access the GDS flask app no matter what. This is the main reason why I got interested in your solution because I do need a working Fprime Docker-based version.
TIA,
Regards

[Joshua-Anderson]

@ChangoBuitrago Did you try passing in the --gui-addr 0.0.0.0 argument to the GDS? By default the GDS gui only listens on 127.0.0.1, which wouldn't be accessible outside the docker container.

[ChangoBuitrago]

Thanks, @Joshua-Anderson. I did, but I was kind of in a rush at that time, so I may have missed something. I will give it a try again next week and report back.
Thanks for your help and interest.