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212 changes: 53 additions & 159 deletions README.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
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![🚧 Under construction 👷‍♂️](https://i.imgur.com/LEP2R3N.png)

# Dev Container Features: Self Authoring Template

> This repo provides a starting point and example for creating your own custom [dev container Features](https://containers.dev/implementors/features/), hosted for free on GitHub Container Registry. The example in this repository follows the [dev container Feature distribution specification](https://containers.dev/implementors/features-distribution/).
>
> To provide feedback to the specification, please leave a comment [on spec issue #70](https://github.com/devcontainers/spec/issues/70). For more broad feedback regarding dev container Features, please see [spec issue #61](https://github.com/devcontainers/spec/issues/61).

## Example Contents

This repository contains a _collection_ of two Features - `hello` and `color`. These Features serve as simple feature implementations. Each sub-section below shows a sample `devcontainer.json` alongside example usage of the Feature.

### `hello`

Running `hello` inside the built container will print the greeting provided to it via its `greeting` option.

```jsonc
{
"image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/base:ubuntu",
"features": {
"ghcr.io/devcontainers/feature-starter/hello:1": {
"greeting": "Hello"
}
}
}
```

```bash
$ hello
<!-- markdownlint-disable MD041 MD033 -->

Hello, user.
```

### `color`
![🚧 Under construction 👷‍♂️](https://i.imgur.com/LEP2R3N.png)

Running `color` inside the built container will print your favorite color to standard out.
# Devcontainer community features

```jsonc
{
"image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/base:ubuntu",
"features": {
"ghcr.io/devcontainers/feature-starter/color:1": {
"favorite": "green"
}
}
}
```
🧰 Community-driven collection of addons for [@devcontainers]

```bash
$ color
<div align="center">

my favorite color is green
```
![Code demo](https://i.imgur.com/Gz9yWx8.png)

## Repo and Feature Structure
[Docs website](https://devcontainers-community.github.io/features/)
| [Official feature index](https://containers.dev/features)

Similar to the [`devcontainers/features`](https://github.com/devcontainers/features) repo, this repository has a `src` folder. Each Feature has its own sub-folder, containing at least a `devcontainer-feature.json` and an entrypoint script `install.sh`.
</div>

```
├── src
│ ├── hello
│ │ ├── devcontainer-feature.json
│ │ └── install.sh
│ ├── color
│ │ ├── devcontainer-feature.json
│ │ └── install.sh
| ├── ...
│ │ ├── devcontainer-feature.json
│ │ └── install.sh
...
```
➕ Add extra features to your GitHub Codespace \
🐳 Use JSON, not `Dockerfile`s! \
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Community-driven maintainership

An [implementing tool](https://containers.dev/supporting#tools) will composite [the documented dev container properties](https://containers.dev/implementors/features/#devcontainer-feature-json-properties) from the feature's `devcontainer-feature.json` file, and execute in the `install.sh` entrypoint script in the container during build time. Implementing tools are also free to process attributes under the `customizations` property as desired.
**🤝 We want you!** If you're a community devcontainer feature maintainer, we'd
love to add you to this project! ❤️ If you just want to hand off a devcontainer
feature that you no longer want to maintain, **that's perfect too**. Open a
[Discussion] and let's have a friendly chat. 😊

### Options
## Usage

All available options for a Feature should be declared in the `devcontainer-feature.json`. The syntax for the `options` property can be found in the [devcontainer Feature json properties reference](https://containers.dev/implementors/features/#devcontainer-feature-json-properties).
![JSON](https://img.shields.io/static/v1?style=for-the-badge&message=JSON&color=000000&logo=JSON&logoColor=FFFFFF&label=)
![GitHub Codespaces](https://img.shields.io/static/v1?style=for-the-badge&message=GitHub+Codespaces&color=181717&logo=GitHub&logoColor=FFFFFF&label=)
![devcontainers](https://img.shields.io/static/v1?style=for-the-badge&message=devcontainers&color=2496ED&logo=Docker&logoColor=FFFFFF&label=)

For example, the `color` feature provides an enum of three possible options (`red`, `gold`, `green`). If no option is provided in a user's `devcontainer.json`, the value is set to "red".
Add a `features: {}` key to your existing `devcontainer.json` file, or make a
new one at `.devcontainer/devcontainer.json` in your repository. Then, just add
[one of the features that we offer] to the object map with an optional `{}`
options object.

```jsonc
// .devcontainer/devcontainer.json
{
// ...
"options": {
"favorite": {
"type": "string",
"enum": [
"red",
"gold",
"green"
],
"default": "red",
"description": "Choose your favorite color."
}
}
"features": {
"ghcr.io/devcontainers-community/features/dart": {}
}
}
```

Options are exported as Feature-scoped environment variables. The option name is captialized and sanitized according to [option resolution](https://containers.dev/implementors/features/#option-resolution).

```bash
#!/bin/bash

echo "Activating feature 'color'"
echo "The provided favorite color is: ${FAVORITE}"

...
```

## Distributing Features

### Versioning
[📚 Read more about each feature on our documentation website!](https://devcontainers-community.github.io/features/)

Features are individually versioned by the `version` attribute in a Feature's `devcontainer-feature.json`. Features are versioned according to the semver specification. More details can be found in [the dev container Feature specification](https://containers.dev/implementors/features/#versioning).
## Development

### Publishing
![Devcontainers](https://img.shields.io/static/v1?style=for-the-badge&message=Devcontainers&color=2496ED&logo=Docker&logoColor=FFFFFF&label=)
![Bash](https://img.shields.io/static/v1?style=for-the-badge&message=Bash&color=4EAA25&logo=GNU+Bash&logoColor=FFFFFF&label=)

> NOTE: The Distribution spec can be [found here](https://containers.dev/implementors/features-distribution/).
>
> While any registry [implementing the OCI Distribution spec](https://github.com/opencontainers/distribution-spec) can be used, this template will leverage GHCR (GitHub Container Registry) as the backing registry.
🐣 The @devcontainers-community organization is still in its early stages. This
features repository is currently trying to **hit the highlights first**. That
means popular features first! If you notice a bug 🐛 or have an improvement
suggestion 💡 we'd love to hear it! 😍

Features are meant to be easily sharable units of dev container configuration and installation code.
If you're interested in getting started modifying, adding, or testing a template
in this repository, you can do so without even leaving your browser thanks to
GitHub Codespaces! ☁️ After optionally forking the repository, you just hit the
green Code button at the top of the GitHub web UI and then Create codespace on
main. 🚀

This repo contains a GitHub Action [workflow](.github/workflows/release.yaml) that will publish each feature to GHCR. By default, each Feature will be prefixed with the `<owner/<repo>` namespace. For example, the two Features in this repository can be referenced in a `devcontainer.json` with:

```
ghcr.io/devcontainers/feature-starter/color:1
ghcr.io/devcontainers/feature-starter/hello:1
```
After launching your dev environment and making some changes, you're probably
going to want to test those changes. Run the `devcontainer features test`
command to run _all_ the tests, or just `-f` to run a specific one that you're
working on. Be warned that this involves some heavyweight Docker-ing around!

The provided GitHub Action will also publish a third "metadata" package with just the namespace, eg: `ghcr.io/devcontainers/feature-starter`. This contains information useful for tools aiding in Feature discovery.

'`devcontainers/feature-starter`' is known as the feature collection namespace.

### Marking Feature Public

Note that by default, GHCR packages are marked as `private`. To stay within the free tier, Features need to be marked as `public`.

This can be done by navigating to the Feature's "package settings" page in GHCR, and setting the visibility to 'public`. The URL may look something like:

```
https://github.com/users/<owner>/packages/container/<repo>%2F<featureName>/settings
```sh
devcontainer features test
```

<img width="669" alt="image" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/23246594/185244705-232cf86a-bd05-43cb-9c25-07b45b3f4b04.png">
🤝 Check out our contributing guide to see how to get your changes merged!

### Adding Features to the Index

If you'd like your Features to appear in our [public index](https://containers.dev/features) so that other community members can find them, you can do the following:

* Go to [github.com/devcontainers/devcontainers.github.io](https://github.com/devcontainers/devcontainers.github.io)
* This is the GitHub repo backing the [containers.dev](https://containers.dev/) spec site
* Open a PR to modify the [collection-index.yml](https://github.com/devcontainers/devcontainers.github.io/blob/gh-pages/_data/collection-index.yml) file

This index is from where [supporting tools](https://containers.dev/supporting) like [VS Code Dev Containers](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode-remote.remote-containers) and [GitHub Codespaces](https://github.com/features/codespaces) surface Features for their dev container creation UI.

#### Using private Features in Codespaces

For any Features hosted in GHCR that are kept private, the `GITHUB_TOKEN` access token in your environment will need to have `package:read` and `contents:read` for the associated repository.

Many implementing tools use a broadly scoped access token and will work automatically. GitHub Codespaces uses repo-scoped tokens, and therefore you'll need to add the permissions in `devcontainer.json`

An example `devcontainer.json` can be found below.

```jsonc
{
"image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/base:ubuntu",
"features": {
"ghcr.io/my-org/private-features/hello:1": {
"greeting": "Hello"
}
},
"customizations": {
"codespaces": {
"repositories": {
"my-org/private-features": {
"permissions": {
"packages": "read",
"contents": "read"
}
}
}
}
}
}
```
<!-- prettier-ignore-start -->
[@devcontainers]: https://github.com/devcontainers
[one of the features that we offer]: https://devcontainers-community.github.io/features/
[Discussion]: https://github.com/devcontainers-community/features/discussions/new?category=general
<!-- prettier-ignore-end -->