common.md

IMPORTANT NOTE: We're starting to migrate contents of this repo to the devcontainers org, as part of the work on the open dev container specification.

We've currently migrated the common-utils Feature to devcontainers/features/src/common-utils.

For more details, you can review the announcement issue.

Common Utility and Non-Root User Install Script

Installs a set of common command line utilities, Oh My Zsh!, and sets up a non-root user.

Script status: Stable

OS support: Debian 9+, Ubuntu 16.04+, Alpine 3.9+, CentOS/RHEL 7+ (community supported) and downstream distros.

Maintainer: The VS Code and GitHub Codespaces teams

Syntax

./common-debian.sh [Install zsh flag] [Non-root user] [User UID] [User GID] [Upgrade packages flag] [Install Oh My Zsh! flag] [Non-free packages flag]
./common-redhat.sh [Install zsh flag] [Non-root user] [User UID] [User GID] [Upgrade packages flag] [Install Oh My Zsh! flag]
./common-alpine.sh [Install zsh flag] [Non-root user] [User UID] [User GID] [Install Oh My Zsh! flag]

Or as a feature (Debian/Ubuntu only):

"features": {
    "common": {
        "username": "automatic",
        "uid": "automatic",
        "gid": "automatic",
        "installZsh": true,
        "installOhMyZsh": true,
        "upgradePackages": true,
        "nonFreePackages": false
    }
}

Note: common-redhat.sh is community supported.

Argument	Feature option	Default	Description
Install zsh flag	installZsh	true	A true/false flag that indicates whether zsh should be installed.
Non-root user	username	automatic	Specifies a user in the container other than root that should be created or modified. A value of automatic will cause the script to check for a user called vscode, then node, codespace, and finally a user with a UID of 1000 before falling back to root. A value of none will skip this step.
User UID	uid	automatic	A specific UID (e.g. 1000) for the user that will be created modified. A value of automatic will pick a free one if the user is created.
User GID	gid	automatic	A specific GID (e.g. 1000) for the user's group that will be created modified. A value of automatic will pick a free one if the group is created.
Upgrade packages flag	upgradePackages	true	A true/false flag that indicates whether packages should be upgraded to the latest for the distro.
Install Oh My Zsh! flag	installOhMyZsh	true	A true/false flag that indicates whether Oh My Zsh! should be installed.
Non-free packages flag	nonFreePackages	false	A true/false flag that non-free channel packages like manpages-posix should be installed.

Note: Previous versions of this script also installed Oh My Bash! but this has been dropped in favor of a simplified, default PS1 since it conflicted with common user configuration. A stub has been added so those that may have referenced it in places like their dotfiles are informed of the change and how to add it back if needed.

Usage

Feature use

To install these capabilities in your primary dev container, reference it in devcontainer.json as follows:

"features": {
    "common": {
        "username": "automatic",
        "uid": "automatic",
        "gid": "automatic",
        "installZsh": true,
        "installOhMyZsh": true,
        "upgradePackages": true,
        "nonFreePackages": false
    }
}

If you have already built your development container, run the Rebuild Container command from the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + P or F1) to pick up the change.

Script use

Ubuntu / Debian:

1. Add common-debian.sh to .devcontainer/library-scripts

2. Add the following to your .devcontainer/Dockerfile:

   COPY library-scripts/common-debian.sh /tmp/library-scripts/
   RUN apt-get update && bash /tmp/library-scripts/common-debian.sh

RedHat:

1. Add common-redhat.sh to .devcontainer/library-scripts

2. Add the following to your .devcontainer/Dockerfile:

   COPY library-scripts/common-redhat.sh /tmp/library-scripts/
   RUN bash /tmp/library-scripts/common-redhat.sh
   

Alpine:

1. Add common-alpine.sh to .devcontainer/library-scripts

2. Add the following to your .devcontainer/Dockerfile:

   COPY library-scripts/common-alpine.sh /tmp/library-scripts/
   RUN ash /tmp/library-scripts/common-alpine.sh
   

That's it!

Speeding up the command prompt in large repositories

This script provides a custom command prompt that includes information about the git repository for the current folder. However, with certain large repositories, this can result in a slow command prompt since the required git status command can be slow. To resolve this, you can update a git setting to remove the git portion of the command prompt.

To disable the prompt for the current folder's repository, enter the following in a terminal or add it to your postCreateCommand or dotfiles:

git config codespaces-theme.hide-status 1

This setting will survive a rebuild since it is applied to the repository rather than the container.

Note: If this setting is not working and you have a copy of common-debian.sh in your .devcontainer/library-scripts folder, update it to the latest version of this script.