FAQ about Dev Containers

After a dev container is created, the following volumes and properties appear in Docker:

• jb_devcontainer_cache_xxx: this is a cached volume that contains all backend cashes in the root/cashed/jetbrains folder.

• jb_devcontainers_shared_volume: the process of copying an IDE backend takes a certain amount of time. However, this process is done only once during the first dev container creation, and everything is copied into this volume. Then, this volume is shared among multiple containers, and we don't need to repeat the downloading process. If we create a dev container using another IDE or a different IDE version, we copy it into the same Docker volume. All backends are stored in one volume, making it easy to manage.

  For example, remove unnecessary backends through the Manage backends dialog.

• jb-devcontainer-features-xxx: if you use features in your devcontainer.json file then all features are placed into such images.

  Currently, the unnecessary images should be deleted manually.

• jb_devcontainer_sources_xxx: if we use git clone then all sources are cloned into this volume using helper container (based on alpine/git image).

Add to Help | Diagnostic Tools | Debug Log Settings the following strings:

com.intellij.platform.ijent:all

com.intellij.clouds.docker.gateway.ijent:all

Run the following command:

docker --host <ssh> build <git-url>:<context-dir>

Check the following example:

docker --host ssh://jetbrains@MUNIT-234:22 build
            git@git.jetbrains.team/devcont/DevCont_test_cases.git:.devcontainer

We create a helper container based on the small alpine/git image, which contains some of the required tools or libraries, for example git or the SSH client. We need that to clone the repository that can be absent in the image used for a dev container creation.

If we already have all the sources locally, there is no need to use such a complicated and slow method like Docker via SSH.