Talks - Sarah Kaiser: Eternal sunshine of the spotless development environment

Dev containers provide a standardized way to package development environments, including code, editor settings, and dependencies using Docker

Key benefits:

• Speeds up collaboration and onboarding for open source projects
• Ensures consistent development environments across team members
• Provides fallback option when local setup fails
• Makes bug reproduction easier by sharing exact environment
• Reduces setup time for workshops and teaching

Multiple ways to use dev containers:

• Locally with Docker installed
• Through GitHub Codespaces (60 free hours/month)
• Via cloud hosting services like DevPod
• With IDEs like VS Code and PyCharm

Dev container configuration includes:

• JSON file describing environment setup
• Optional Docker file for custom configuration
• Extension and editor settings
• Features can be added without modifying base container

Additional capabilities:

• Pre-builds available to speed up container startup
• Can be used with VS Code Live Share for real-time collaboration
• Supports GPU environments for ML workloads
• Templates available for quick setup
• Compatible with JupyterLab frontend for educational settings

The specification is open standard at containers.dev with growing ecosystem support