If not using WSL2 on Windows, right-click on the Docker task bar item, select Settings / Preferences and update Resources > File Sharing with any locations your source code is kept.Install Docker Desktop for Mac/Windows.

Install and configure Docker for your operating system. Install VS Code or VS Code Insiders and this extension. Note that while the Docker CLI is required, the Docker daemon/service does not need to be running locally if you are using a remote Docker host.

See the Remote Development with Linux article for details. While ARMv7l (AArch32), ARMv8l (AArch64), and musl based Alpine Linux support is available, some extensions installed on these devices may not work due to the use of glibc or x86 compiled native code in the extension. Other glibc based Linux containers may work if they have needed prerequisites. (The Ubuntu snap package is not supported.) Linux: Docker CE/EE 18.06+ and Docker Compose 1.21+.Windows 10 Home (2004+) requires Docker Desktop 2.2+ and the WSL2 back-end. Windows: Docker Desktop 2.0+ on Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise.

You then work with VS Code as if everything were running locally on your machine, except now they are separated inside a container. Extensions are installed and run inside the container where they have full access to the tools, platform, and file system. Workspace files can be mounted into the container from the local file system, or copied or cloned into it once the container is running. The extension starts (or attaches to) a development container running a well defined tool and runtime stack.

Try out new technologies or clone a copy of a code base without impacting your local setup.

Make it easy for new team members / contributors to get up and running in a consistent development environment.

Quickly swap between different, separate development environments and safely make updates without worrying about impacting your local machine.

Develop with a consistent, easily reproducible toolchain on the same operating system you deploy to.

Whether you deploy to containers or not, containers make a great development environment because you can: The Dev Containers extension lets you use a Docker container as a full-featured development environment.

Visual studio code install folder