Visual Studio Code Remote Containers: Jekyll

For the last 3 years this blog was written using Jekyll which has a series of requirements such as Ruby that I don’t want to keep installing or maintaining on my PC. So I created this Developer Container for those who want to use Jekyll from an isolated container.

Let’s check the container definition:

devcontainer.json file

This file configures the remote container with the specified extensions

 1{
 2	"name": "Jekyll",
 3	"dockerFile": "Dockerfile",
 4
 5	// Use 'settings' to set *default* container specific settings.json values on container create. 
 6	// You can edit these settings after create using File > Preferences > Settings > Remote.
 7	"settings": { 
 8		"terminal.integrated.shell.linux": "/bin/bash"
 9	},
10
11	// Use 'appPort' to create a container with published ports. If the port isn't working, be sure
12	// your server accepts connections from all interfaces (0.0.0.0 or '*'), not just localhost.
13	// "appPort": ["3000:3000"],
14
15	// Uncomment the next line to run commands after the container is created.
16	// "postCreateCommand": "cd ${input:projectName} && bundle install",
17
18	// Uncomment the next line to use a non-root user. On Linux, this will prevent
19	// new files getting created as root, but you may need to update the USER_UID
20	// and USER_GID in .devcontainer/Dockerfile to match your user if not 1000.
21	// "runArgs": [ "-u", "vscode" ],
22
23	// Add the IDs of extensions you want installed when the container is created in the array below.
24	"extensions": []
25}

Dockerfile

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

 1FROM debian:latest
 2
 3# Avoid warnings by switching to noninteractive
 4ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
 5
 6# This Dockerfile adds a non-root 'vscode' user with sudo access. However, for Linux,
 7# this user's GID/UID must match your local user UID/GID to avoid permission issues
 8# with bind mounts. Update USER_UID / USER_GID if yours is not 1000. See
 9# https://aka.ms/vscode-remote/containers/non-root-user for details.
10ARG USERNAME=vscode
11ARG USER_UID=1000
12ARG USER_GID=$USER_UID
13
14# Configure apt and install packages
15RUN apt-get update \
16    && apt-get -y install --no-install-recommends apt-utils dialog 2>&1 \
17    #
18    # Install vim, git, process tools, lsb-release
19    && apt-get install -y \
20        git \
21    #
22    # Install ruby
23    && apt-get install -y \
24        make \
25		build-essential \
26		ruby \
27        ruby-dev \
28    #
29    # Install jekyll
30    && gem install \
31        bundler \
32        jekyll \
33    #
34    # Create a non-root user to use if preferred - see https://aka.ms/vscode-remote/containers/non-root-user.
35    && groupadd --gid $USER_GID $USERNAME \
36    && useradd -s /bin/bash --uid $USER_UID --gid $USER_GID -m $USERNAME \
37    # [Optional] Add sudo support for the non-root user
38    && apt-get install -y sudo \
39    && echo $USERNAME ALL=\(root\) NOPASSWD:ALL > /etc/sudoers.d/$USERNAME\
40    && chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/$USERNAME \
41    #
42    # Clean up
43    && apt-get autoremove -y \
44    && apt-get clean -y \
45    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
46
47# Switch back to dialog for any ad-hoc use of apt-get
48ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=dialog