abp framework development in Dev Containers

[leonkosak]

What do you think, that you add .devcontainer (and corresponding files in it) when abp framework solution is created (vial CLI)?
Operating systems (host) often become messy with various installed SDKs and libraries (and with many versions side-by-side).
Adding Devcontainers solves this issue so that in container are installed only SDKs and libraries which are relevant for solution (repo).
Dev Containers: https://containers.dev/

Dev Containers are well-established and opensource solution for "isolated development environment".

@maliming, what do you think?
cc @berkansasmaz

[leonkosak]

Additional benefit: Running AI agents inside dev container is also great in case of "rm -rf" commands. :) Using AI ggents in "full access/approve all" mode cannot harm the whole computer.

[maliming]

Hi,

Dev containers are a nice fit for a lot of projects, and I get the appeal here.

The tricky part for us is that the templates produce a lot of different shapes. A dev container that actually works has to line up with the UI framework, database provider, tiered configuration, certificate setup and database connectivity of the solution it lands in. Keeping all of those variants working across releases is more than we want to sign up for, so we'd rather not ship one in the templates.

There's also ABP Studio to think about. It starts builds and applications on the host, so if you work through Studio you'd still need the SDKs installed locally. For a CLI and VS Code workflow it's a different story, and a dev container you add to your own solution can be tailored to exactly the stack you picked.

One thing worth keeping in mind on the AI agent side: the default local Dev Containers setup bind-mounts the repository read-write, so an agent inside the container can still wipe the working tree. It keeps the rest of your machine safe, not the code you're working on. Codespaces gets closer to what you're after there, since the whole environment lives away from your machine.

Thanks

[leonkosak]

I completely understand your point of view @maliming.
My team always use abp MVC and EF Core. Would you maybe consider the most commonly used scenarios of abp templates to potentially create dev container?

I also agree regarding wiping the working tree (git), but I always commit often, so the damage is always very bounded and controlled. :)

P.S.: Dev Containers are also supperted very well in Coder (https://coder.com/) using Docker-In-Docker.