Last year I was working on a project for deploying Azure services using Ansible, and let me tell you something: Back then a feature like Visual Studio Remote Containers would have helped us so much!

Why? Because just installing Visual Studio Code, the Remote Development Extension Pack, and Docker you have a killer combo that makes it possible to create a Development environment in a snap and share it with your source code.

When I learned about this feature I tought I should create a Developer Container for those who need to work with Azure and Ansible so I went hands on and after collaborating with Chuck Lantz the container definition resulted in the following two files:

devcontainer.json


This file configures the remote container with the specified extensions

 1{
 2	"name": "Azure Ansible",
 3	"dockerFile": "Dockerfile",
 4	"runArgs": [
 5		// Uncomment the next line if you will use a ptrace-based debugger like C++, Go, and Rust.
 6		// "--cap-add=SYS_PTRACE", "--security-opt", "seccomp=unconfined",
 7		"-v", "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock"
 8	],
 9
10	// Uncomment the next line if you want to publish any ports.
11	// "appPort": [],
12
13	// Uncomment the next line if you want to add in default container specific settings.json values
14	// "settings":  { "workbench.colorTheme": "Quiet Light" },
15
16	// Uncomment the next line to run commands after the container is created.
17	// "postCreateCommand": "ansible --version",
18
19	"extensions": [
20		"vscoss.vscode-ansible",
21		"redhat.vscode-yaml",
22		"ms-vscode.azurecli"
23	]
24}

Dockerfile


This is the Dockerfile with all the tooling for the Development environment.

 1#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 2# Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
 3# Licensed under the MIT License. See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2090316 for license information.
 4#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 5
 6# Pick any base image, but if you select node, skip installing node. 😊
 7FROM debian:9
 8
 9# Avoid warnings by switching to noninteractive
10ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11
12# Configure apt and install packages
13RUN apt-get update \
14    && apt-get -y install --no-install-recommends apt-utils 2>&1 \
15    #
16    # Verify git, required tools installed
17    && apt-get install -y \
18        git \
19        curl \
20        procps \
21        unzip \
22        apt-transport-https \
23        ca-certificates \
24        gnupg-agent \
25        software-properties-common \
26        lsb-release 2>&1 \
27    #
28    # [Optional] Install Node.js for Azure Cloud Shell support 
29    # Change the "lts/*" in the two lines below to pick a different version
30    && curl -so- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.34.0/install.sh | bash 2>&1 \
31    && /bin/bash -c "source $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh \
32        && nvm install lts/* \
33        && nvm alias default lts/*" 2>&1 \
34    #
35    # [Optional] For local testing instead of cloud shell
36    # Install Docker CE CLI.
37    && curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/$(lsb_release -is | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')/gpg | apt-key add - 2>/dev/null \
38    && add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/$(lsb_release -is | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]') $(lsb_release -cs) stable" \
39    && apt-get update \
40    && apt-get install -y docker-ce-cli \
41    #
42    # [Optional] For local testing instead of cloud shell
43    # Install the Azure CLI
44    && echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/azure-cli/ $(lsb_release -cs) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/azure-cli.list \
45    && curl -sL https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | apt-key add - 2>/dev/null \
46    && apt-get update \
47    && apt-get install -y azure-cli \
48    #
49    # Install Ansible
50    && apt-get install -y libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev python-pip \
51    && pip install ansible[azure] \
52    #
53    # Clean up
54    && apt-get autoremove -y \
55    && apt-get clean -y \
56    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
57
58# Switch back to dialog for any ad-hoc use of apt-get
59ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=dialog

To learn more about the Azure Ansible Remote Container please check here.

If you want to use Developer Conatianers with WSL 2 start here

Hope it helps!