Dev Containers

A consistent development environment is crucial for building reliable software. Dev containers solve this problem by encapsulating your development tools and dependencies inside Docker containers. This ensures that all developers on a project share the exact same environment—regardless of their operating system or local setup.

While dev containers are natively supported in Visual Studio Code, this project’s setup is also compatible with other tools and workflows that support Docker and Docker Compose.

Structure

The .devcontainer directory at the root of the project contains all configuration necessary to spin up a standardized development environment:

Inside the .devcontainer folder, you will find the following files:

  • `devcontainer.json`: Entry point for the dev container configuration file.

  • `compose.yaml`: Docker Compose file that defines the services that will run inside the container.

  • `Dockerfile`: Dockerfile that defines the image that will be used to create the container.

  • `postcreate.sh`: Script that is executed after the container is created, is used to install dependencies and configure the environment.

Usage

  1. Make sure you have Docker installed, up and running.

  2. Install Remote - Containers extension in Visual Studio Code.

  3. Open the project in Visual Studio Code.

  4. Open the command palette (usually Ctrl+Shift+P or Cmd+Shift+P), and search for Remote-Containers: Reopen in Container.

  5. Wait for the container to be created.

Note

Your source code resides on the host machine (mapped inside the container under .src/workspace). Changes made outside this path may not persist when the container is recreated.

Inside the container there are a few tools pre-installed to help you develop:

  • compile_workspace.sh: Compiles ROS2 workspace with some flags (merge-install, symlink-install).

  • test_workspace.sh: Executes all tests in the workspace and validates the workspace.

  • generate_debs.sh: Generates Debian packages from the workspace, if debs/whitelist.txt is present will only generate the packages listed in the file and its dependencies.

For more information about tools installed in the container, check the robotnik_ros_images repository.

Resources