imsmith/rails-with-vscode-remote-containers

A very basic Ruby on Rails setup using VSCode's Remote Containers

README

Using Visual Studio Code's new Remote Containers features, this repository is an example of how to utilize the VSCode functionality to run a complete development environment using containers. Please note that other than having VSCode (currently VSCode Insiders), the VSCode "Remote Development" plugin, and Docker (tested on Docker for macOS) installed, there are no other local dependencies.

Prerequisites

1. Install Visual Studio Code Insiders.

2. Install the Remote Development plugin.

3. Install Docker Desktop:

• Windows
• macOS
• Linux:
  • We'll assume if you're running Linux, you should know what you're doing

Things to Know

• This repo orchestrates a docker-compose setup, so you should likely test the docker-compose setup if you're not using macOS.

Starting the Stack

1. Clone this repository and open the directory in VSCode

2. When prompted or via the Command Pallette, "Reopen" the folder "in Containers"

At this point, the Docker setup will commence. It will download the necessary images from Docker Hub, build the application container image, start up the application stack (app container and MySQL container), and copy the necessary VSCode pieces into place within the running application container.

Once all of that is done, the developer will be left with a VSCode window in which to develop, and the VSCode Terminal will be running within the application container. From there, a developer should be able to do all of their normal work, including bundling new gems, installing new NodeJS packages via yarn, running migrations and rake tasks, etc. without having to worry about interacting directly with Docker.

Once work is done, shutting down the stack is as simple as closing the folder window in VSCode.

Benefits

• No need to install local tooling past having enough to run the VSCode editor and Docker.
• No locally running database servers.
• No language version managers: the containers set all necessary language versions, and Bundler/Yarn behave as expected based on their lock files.
• No complicated stack spin up with multiple commands and windows.