Install devcontainer with Homebrew, Nix

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• devcontainer

Project history

The devcontainers/spec repository was created in January 2022, and devcontainers/cli followed in April 2022. The CLI changelog starts with 0.1.0 as the initial version and then quickly adds build, feature, template, metadata, and lifecycle support through the 2022 releases.

Adoption history

The broader dev container format came from the need for structured metadata that tools could share, similar in spirit to the Language Server Protocol. The official supporting-tools page lists editors and services such as VS Code, Visual Studio, IntelliJ IDEA, GitHub Codespaces, and the standalone Dev Container CLI as participants in the ecosystem.

How it is used

Package users install the devcontainer executable, keep devcontainer.json in a project, and run commands such as devcontainer up, build, exec, read-configuration, features, and templates. The CLI README also frames it as useful for CI, where a project's development container can be reused as a build and test environment.

Why package nerds care

For package nerds, devcontainer is important because it turns editor-oriented development-environment metadata into a portable CLI contract. It bridges package managers, Docker or Podman-style container engines, OCI-distributed features, templates, GitHub Actions, Codespaces, and local development workflows.

Timeline

• 2022: devcontainers/spec repository created.
• 2022: devcontainers/cli repository created.
• 2022: CLI 0.1.0 initial version appears in the changelog.
• 2022: CLI 0.12.0 added native feature publishing to OCI registries.
• 2026: CLI 0.87.0 made lockfile generation stable by default.

Related projects

• Officially related projects include the Development Containers specification, Dev Container Features and Templates, devcontainers/ci, VS Code Dev Containers, GitHub Codespaces, Docker, Docker Compose, and supporting IDE integrations.

Sources

• https://containers.dev/
• https://containers.dev/overview
• https://containers.dev/supporting
• https://github.com/devcontainers/cli
• https://github.com/devcontainers/cli/blob/main/README.md
• https://github.com/devcontainers/cli/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md
• https://api.github.com/repos/devcontainers/cli
• https://api.github.com/repos/devcontainers/spec