Development Docker containers attachment

[a-babarytskyi]

The main premise: being able to attach to docker container (later also K8s pods would be good). VSCode installs server on remote hosts and containers, so would be nice to have similar functionality in zed as well.

Why it mattaers for me?

I am doing currently mostly web development. In our place we have a bunch of home made apps with unified developemnt environment setup. Environment is set as follows:

A docker compose with at least 4 containers, sometimes 6:

• reverse proxy
• backend
• frontend
• db
• caching
• email tests (mailhog)

Project files are mapped into containers accordingly: all files of frontend are mapped into frontend container and same goes for backend -> backend container. Each has their own VSCode config inside with debugger setup, color schema fot easier navigation between editor windows etc. I attach VS code to containers and change files from inside containers, run debugger or other commands. We keep window with the whole project directory open as well for git.

As files are mapped into project, after changes are saved in container I can git commit from the whole project window.

Pluses of the setup:

We have docker files for frontend and backend that setup environment for dev as similar as possible to production, and we don't need to jump between node/python versions, create venvs etc., makes it all consistent and reverse proxy with self-generated makecerts results in having proper https://localhost connection.

There exists a topic here, sort of similar: #28432 . Zed currently allows SSH attachment, but setting up ssh just to work properly with containers looks abit overkill, since VS code manages to do it without need for SSH.

Would be nice to have also GUI for docker, but that is not really necessary.

I would also add, that this is the main stopper for me to switch to zed completely. I can live without certain extensions and funky animals jumping in mu screen, but dev containers are a musthave 😅

[kylejbrk]

@a-babarytskyi i got zed working with devpod and it was pretty seamless. devpod will spin up your devcontainer and automatically create an ssh connection by default. then you can just connect to it through zed.

[jamesgecko]

This kinda works for me. On my project's container, Zed's integrated terminal displays env: '-l': No such file or directory. Haven't been able to track down where this is coming from. I've commented out my shell preference (fish) in settings.json and reconnected but it didn't seem to matter.

SSHing into the dev container from my normal terminal app does work, though.

I'm also slightly worried about the longevity of Devpod. It's open source, but the "pro" edition advertised in the app seems to have been discontinued, and the company that built it appears to have pivoted to other container-based products.

[alessandrobrunoh]

Hi, so idk if thats the right discussion to talk this, but i didnt find any similar. I use Docker at work a lot and Zed too, but one thing i really wanted was a GUI to see Docker Containers/Compose. Let me know what you guys think, right now im just running the command looking at the output and created the GUI.

[jamesgecko]

Dev Containers are something a little different.

[kylejbrk]

When it comes to functionality in zed its not that different. if you just want devcontainers you can use the cli. But i think we all want to be able to manage and attach docker/devcontainers from zed.

[alessandrobrunoh]

When it comes to functionality in zed its not that different. if you just want devcontainers you can use the cli. But i think we all want to be able to manage and attach docker/devcontainers from zed.

yea, i mean its not that problem to just run docker ps, and look at the output but to have a GUI its better and nicer, no?