Exploring Dev Containers with VS Code and Tutorial Navigator Content

Overview

Explore dev containers with VS Code and Tutorial Navigator content in this comprehensive live session. Work through a three-part blog post series on boosting tutorial UX with dev containers, covering topics such as VS Code, development containers, CAP, CDS, Cloud Foundry, Debian, Node.js, Docker, and more. Learn to set up a development environment using Microsoft's base image for Node.js, build a custom Dockerfile, install necessary tools and modules, and configure devcontainer.json. Gain hands-on experience in creating a project structure, implementing dev container setup in VS Code, and working through a tutorial using CAP tools within the container. By the end of this session, you'll be able to leverage dev containers to enhance your development workflow and improve tutorial user experience.

Syllabus

Welcome & introduction
Getting started with Part 1 of the series
Understanding where the tutorial is in the Tutorial Navigator
Looking at Microsoft's base image for Node.js development
Short digression on window management for macOS
Pulling the base image and running it directly
Starting to build out our Dockerfile definition and performing a test build
Creating a container to work through the prerequisites manually within
Installing the first Node.js module @ui5/cli and adding the step to the Dockerfile
Installing the cf CLI and adding the steps to the Dockerfile
A brief look at how I use hadolint to lint my Dockerfiles
Installing @sap/cds-dk and adding the step to the Dockerfile
Considering tutorial-specific or development-specific VS Code extensions
Introducing the devcontainer.json configuration file where we point to our Dockerfile and extensions that we want sapse.vscode-cds and sapse.sap-ux-fiori-tools-extension-pack
Installing sqlite and adding the step to the apt-get layer in the Dockerfile
Adding the final Node.js module Yeoman and adding it to the Dockerfile too
Finalizing the devcontainer.json file with a couple of extra parameters forwardPorts and remoteUser
Setting up a project directory structure, adding a .devcontainer/ directory and moving the Dockerfile and devcontainer.json into it
Opening VS Code and seeing the wonderful things that happen because of our dev container setup!
Starting to work through the actual tutorial, and seeing that everything works - with CAP tools working inside the container, within the context of VS Code. And we can start up and access the app from our local browser too