Visual Studio Code (VS Code) Tips & Tricks

13 January 2021 - less than 1 min read time
Tags: VSCode Docker VisualStudioCode

VS Code in Docker

VS Code has a very useful feature which allows you to run your code inside a docker container. It handles starting / mounting your code to a Docker container & seamlessly integrating the termainal / debug features.

You will need to install the VS Code Remote - Remote Containers plugin.

Once this is installed, the best way to use this plugin is to create a .devcontainer/devcontainer.json file such as the one below:

{
    "name": "Python Dev",
    "image": "python:3",
    "extensions": [
        "ms-python.python"
    ]
}

This configures VS Code to use a python 3 docker image with the Python extension installed within the container. Extensions are installed on start.

When you start VS Code, you will be prompted to “Reopen in Container”. When you select this, the container will be downloaded if not already present on your machine & started.

Instead of starting with public images, you can also build your own docker images & reference them in this config.

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