DevContainers​

DevContainers is a technology based on Docker for develop inside local containers and as a big benefit we are isolated and we don't need to polute our primary OS with programming tools.

Github is also compatible with this technology and base on DevContainers it is able to generate Github Codespaces where you can work from your browser without the necesity of installing anything!

My Approach​

Base on this technology with a little bit of Docker, Scripting and Set-App, I'll manage to generate this development flow.

Pre-requisites​

• Visual Studio Code with the plugin for Dev Containers

• Docker Engine

Scripting​

You would need to create a simple file with:

BASH (Linux/Mac)

docker volume create --name projects --opt type=none --opt device='<LOCAL-PATH>' --opt o=bind
docker pull franciscomoreno1/set-app:latest
docker run -it -v projects:/projects -w /projects franciscomoreno1/set-app:latest /bin/sh

Replace <LOCAL-PATH> with the path that you want to contain your projects in your local filesystem

Execute one time the file and you would have prompt a console where to execute your set-app command:

npx @set-app/cli '<PROJECT-NAME>'

The first time is going to download the tool in the container but the following times just restarting the container would be enoght.

NPM​

In SetApp we focus on build the tools around technologies that we already use. One of them is NPM who is in charge of generate our package.json, so in a fresh machine with the default config, it would look like:

There is some config, like the description that is different between projects and because of that, it's taken care with our tool

On the other hand we have common info that we could be shared between projects, for some of them, like the License or the Version we have default values (ISC and 1.0.0). Other values like the Author are not even set.

Author Url​

You could set your personal webpage

npm config set init-author-url="<URL>"

License​

You could set a default license (current default value: ISC)

npm config set init-license="<LICENSE>"

Intial Version​

You could set a default version (current default value: 1.0.0)

npm config set init-version="<VERSION>"

Author Email​

You could set an author email to contact

npm config set init-author-email="<EMAIL>"

Author Name​

You could set a default author name

npm config set init-author-name"<NAME>"

If we execute those commands the result will be a package.json similar to the next one:

README​

Not only that, other tools used in SetApp use these values, for example our README generator: readme-md-generator.

Before​

After​

Full Example App​

Running a command similar to:

The README generated would look like: