Working with dev containers

The dev container integration appears in your Coder dashboard, providing a visual representation of the running environment:

SSH Access

You can SSH into your dev container directly using the Coder CLI:

coder ssh --container keen_dijkstra my-workspace

Web Terminal Access

Once your workspace and dev container are running, you can use the web terminal in the Coder interface to execute commands directly inside the dev container.

IDE Integration (VS Code)

You can open your dev container directly in VS Code by:

1. Selecting "Open in VS Code Desktop" from the Coder web interface
2. Using the Coder CLI with the container flag:

coder open vscode --container keen_dijkstra my-workspace

While optimized for VS Code, other IDEs with dev containers support may also work.

Port Forwarding

During the early access phase, port forwarding is limited to ports defined via appPort in your devcontainer.json file.

For example, with this devcontainer.json configuration:

{
    "appPort": ["8080:8080", "4000:3000"]
}

You can forward these ports to your local machine using:

coder port-forward my-workspace --tcp 8080,4000

This forwards port 8080 (local) -> 8080 (agent) -> 8080 (dev container) and port 4000 (local) -> 4000 (agent) -> 3000 (dev container).

Dev Container Features

You can use standard dev container features in your devcontainer.json file. Coder also maintains a repository of features to enhance your development experience.

Currently available features include code-server.

To use the code-server feature, add the following to your devcontainer.json:

{
    "features": {
        "ghcr.io/coder/devcontainer-features/code-server:1": {
            "port": 13337,
            "host": "0.0.0.0"
        }
    },
    "appPort": ["13337:13337"]
}