Dockside UI usage should be reasonably self-explanatory.
Click Launch
to prepare to launch a devtainer. Choose a Profile to indicate the kind of devtainer you wish to launch, then customise the devtainer according to your needs, optionally selecting (depending on the profile):
- choice of docker runtime
- devtainer docker image
- docker network
- the auth/access level for each service preconfigured within the profile
- a list of users, and/or roles of users, allowed to view the devtainer i.e. access the devtainer and display links to devtainer services displayed on Dockside
- a list of users, and/or roles of users, allowed to develop the devtainer i.e. access the Dockside Theia IDE (which implies rights to view the devtainer too)
- a checkbox for keeping the devtainer private from other admin users (only available to admin users)
When ready, click the green Launch
button. If errors are encountered launching the devtainer, these will be displayed onscreen.
To edit the developer and users lists, change the connected network, change the auth/access levels for the devtainer's services, or change its privacy setting, click Edit
, make changes, then Save
.
To open a preconfigured devtainer service, click the Open
button adjoining the service.
Where SSH has been enabled, you can open an SSH terminal to a devtainer by clicking the Open
button adjoining the SSH service. SSH support requires setup; see Integrated SSH server support.
To create and customise a Profile before launching devtainers, see Profiles.
Dockside runs a version of the amazing open-source Theia IDE, an Eclipse Foundation project, a version of which is also used as the Google Cloud IDE.
Theia aims to be a fully VSCode-compatible IDE, provides an experience highly familiar to VSCode developers, and today seamlessly runs many VSCode extensions, which can be preinstalled or installed on demand via the Extensions tab.
To use git
functionality of the Theia IDE (like Git: Push
and Git: Pull
) or other SSH
-based commands accessible within the Theia IDE UI or terminal, you will first need to have provisioned your devtainer with the required SSH keys. See SSH: Local ssh-agent support.
Upon launch of a devtainer, Dockside configures sudo
within the devtainer to allow the IDE user (the unixuser
) to sudo <command>
(without password) for any command.
Dockside currently provides all devtainer developers with root access within devtainers where sudo
is available.
N.B.
- Sudo functionality will only be available in devtainers: (a) launched from images with
sudo
pre-installed; or, (b) where a profile launchcommand
is provided that installs thesudo
package into the running container e.g. thealpine.json
profile.- An option to disable
sudo
functionality may be provided in a future Dockside version.- An option to preconfigure the devtainer root password (to enable
su
functionality) may be provided in a future Dockside version.