[attendant3446]

I've asked the same question and still haven't got a concrete answer as to why anyone would use devcontainers.

As I understand it, devcontainers use some base image and then instructions in json file with steps what to add for that specific app. Why not just make a docker image with everything your app needs and use it?

[mikeocool]

Yeah I’ve spent a lot of time digging into devcontainers, and I think the basic answer is that they play nice with VScode/codespaces and not much else.

If you are using those, it gives you a nice push button way to get up and running. If you’re not using those, they’re pretty awkward — you just end up with images/containers that can only be built/run/interacted with using the devcontainer-cli tooling.

Would be nice if there was a simple standard way to point to a dockerfile in your repo (or even an image name) and say “build and run this for the dev env.” And the tools ecosystem could then reference and use standard container tools to build and run.

[ndndjdueej]

Please reply to this then :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41940213

Genuine question. I want to use Docker for local dev loop but speed puts me off. I typically use it for "ready to push" tests.

[shepherdjerred]

Check out Earthly :)

[ndndjdueej]

Looks super nice. I checked out the FAQ and didn't find it but does it support debugging (or at least not get in the way)