devcontainer-build-run is an Azure DevOps task aimed at making it easier to re-use a Visual Studio Code dev container in an Azure DevOps pipeline.
Status: this is a pet project that I've been experimenting with. It is not supported and you should expect bugs :-)
The devcontainer-build-run
task uses Docker BuildKit to perform the Docker builds as this has support for storing layer cache metadata with the image. A version of Docker that supports BuiltKit is installed on the default hosted agents - if using a custom agent ensure that you make BuildKit available.
To enable pushing the dev container image to a container registry you need to ensure that your pipeline is signed in to that registry.
The example below shows logging in to an Azure Container Registry instance, and then building and running the dev container with the devcontainer-build-run action:
trigger:
- main
pool:
vmImage: ubuntu-latest
steps:
# Replace the username and registry name here with your own details
# This step also uses an ACR_TOKEN specified as a secret variable
- script: |
docker login -u test -p $ACR_TOKEN yourregistry.azurecr.io
displayName: 'Log in to Container Registry'
env:
ACR_TOKEN: $(ACR_TOKEN)
- task: DevContainerBuildRun@0
inputs:
# Change this to point to your image name
imageName: 'yourregistry.azurecr.io/example-dev-container'
# Change this to be your CI task/script
runCmd: 'make ci-build'
# sourceBranchFilterForPush allows you to limit which branch's builds
# are pushed to the registry
sourceBranchFilterForPush: refs/heads/main
In the example above, the devcontainer-build-run will perform the following steps:
- Build the dev container using the
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json
from the root of the repo - Run the dev container with the
make ci-build
command specified in therunCmd
input - If the run succeeds (and we're not building from a PR branch) then push the image to the container registry. This enables future image builds in step 1 to use the image layers as a cache to improve performance
Name | Required | Description |
---|---|---|
imageName | true | Image name to use when building the dev container image (including registry) |
imageTag | false | Image tag to use when building/pushing the dev container image (defaults to latest ) |
subFolder | false | Use this to specify the repo-relative path to the folder containing the dev container (i.e. the folder that contains the .devcontainer folder). Defaults to repo root |
runCmd | true | The command to run after building the dev container image |
env | false | Specify environment variables to pass to the dev container when run |
push | false | One of: never , filter , always . When set to filter (default), the image if pushed if the sourceBranchFilterForPush , buildReasonsForPush , and pushOnFailedBuild conditions are met |
pushOnFailedBuild | false | If false (default), only push if the build is successful. Set to true to push on failed builds |
sourceBranchFilterForPush | false | Allows you to limit which branch's builds are pushed to the registry (only specified branches are allowed to push). If empty, all branches are allowed |
buildReasonsForPush | false | Allows you to limit the Build.Reason values that are allowed to push to the registry. Defaults to Manual, IndividualCI, BatchedCI. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/build/variables?view=azure-devops&viewFallbackFrom=vsts&tabs=yaml |
skipContainerUserIdUpdate | false | For non-root dev containers (i.e. where remoteUser is specified), the action attempts to make the container user UID and GID match those of the host user. Set this to true to skip this step (defaults to false) |
Suppose your repo has the following structure:
<repo-root>
|-folderA
|-folderB
| |-.devcontainer
| | |-devcontainer.json
| | |-Dockerfile
| |-main.go
|-folderC
...
To build and run the dev container from folderB
you can specify the subFolder
input as shown below.
- task: DevContainerBuildRun@0
inputs:
imageName: 'yourregistry.azurecr.io/example-dev-container'
subFolder: folderB
runCmd: 'make ci-build'
If you want to pass additional environment variables to the dev container when it is run, you can use the env
input as shown below.
- task: DevContainerBuildRun@0
inputs:
imageName: 'yourregistry.azurecr.io/example-dev-container'
runCmd: echo "$HELLO - $WORLD"
env: |
HELLO=Hello
WORLD
In this example, the HELLO
environment variable is specified with the value Hello
in the env
input on the devcontainer-build-run step. The WORLD
environment variable is specified without a value so will pick up the value that is assigned in the standard action's env
configuration.
The result from running the container is to output "Hello - World".