How do i create a custom devcontainer? - visual-studio-code

i have been using devcontainers for a while, and i want to extend some of them.
For instance, i want to install all the linting tools etc for various languages, and use a more personalised container as a starting point (compared to the Microsoft hosted ones).
I also like to host the containers on my own dockerhub, so i do not need to build all this stuff every time. There could also be the use case of using devcontainers for something other than the standard libraries.
I know i can just manually change the docker image reference, but i also like to integrate my changes into the plugin, so i can have my own repository show up as well, to get a native feeling.
I could not find any information on creating my own dev containers, only on extending existing ones. Is any of this i mention officially supported?
Edit: To sum all this up in one question; Can i add devcontainers from my own repo, without merging them into https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-dev-containers ?

If you are using VSCode as the text editor you can install the remote extension pack which allows you to add a template for a devcontainer to your project.
If you aren't using VSCode you can use the templated version as the basis for your own. I created a template repository with the files needed for Python project which you can refer to as well

Related

Is it possible to auto select different "gcloud" configs for different projects in multiple workspaces / folders ? Gcloud on multiple projects

From this question and this article we get that is possible to create multiple configs for the gcloud SDK.
But it seems that you have to manually switch between then, by running:
gcloud config configurations activate <CONFIG_NAME>
But is there a way for each config to be automatically selected whenever I open up a project workspace/folder on VSCode? How can I do this?
I've just tested activating a new config on a different VSCode project. That seems to update it globally. Now, all of my VSCode windows (different projects) are seeing the same activated config.
Isn't it dangerous? I mean, I could be uploading stuff to the cloud on a different project that I'm not aware of. How do people usually handle this? Do I need to run the activate command on every script before deploying something?
Unfortunately, I am not aware of such a possibility, however I have found something interesting that may help you. There is following extension:
GCP Project Switcher
The extension only allows you to change projects, however as I looked into the code it is running gcloud set config project command under the hood. You could raise a request to add the possibility to change the whole configuration to the instead of project only, as it is a very similar approach.

How to use Jenkins Build Keeper Plugin

I would like to use the Jenkins 'Build Keeper Plugin' but I don't know how. The plugin site doesn't describe how to use it. Plugin Site
On this page I found the extension points which I would like to use, e.g. the org.jenkins_ci.plugins.build_keeper.KeepFirstFailedPolicy
But in the configuration part of my project, I can't find any place to configure it to use that policy. So where do I have to add it?
Jenkins version is 1.544
Have you tried to open Job configuration page and look for settings ?
For example it is another plugin but it is very similar : Build Discard plugin, may be you will use it for your purposes:
Build discard old build settings
You can configure it in the job under the section Build Environment.
For screenshots see also https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-25293
If used from within a pipeline, it is enough to write
'currentBuild.rawBuild.keepLog(true)'
That is unfortunately not an interface to the plugin, just a jobs setting, but can solve it when You want to keep all builds, or decide within the build if to keep it.

A good development environment setup for Web2Py

Have been trying out Web2Py for a couple of days now and I decided it to be a keeper. But there is one thing that concerns me a lot and that might be a showstopper in the end. I need a nice development environment & setup I can trust and be productive with. Coming from the MS Visual Studio world I'm looking for something with good autocomplete / intellisense + functions for versioning and deployment.
I did some attempts to edit my code in Eclipse but it needs additional setup to run with autocomplete, and for debugging I dont know if it's possible. (Noticed there was a Django project template in Eclipse which is a bit tempting I must say.)
Wing Ide has a instruction on how to get web2py up and running and I am up to testing that one. Not free, but very cheap compared to much in the Windows world.
I also want a good versioning (hg) setup, and preferably a semi-automatic FTP-deployment-method.
What IDE do Web2Py developers use, and how do your setup look like?
A complete setup script for a project in a good IDE would be awesome! (Just like the installation is, one click to get it running 100%).
Pycharm looks good, perhaps that one can add web2py support http://youtrack.jetbrains.net/issue/PY-1648
Thanks a lot!
OS: Windows 7/Windows XP
IDE: NetBeans
Version control: TortoiseHg/NetBeans
Debugger: winpdb
Shell: IPython
Publish: WinSCP/PuTTY/TortoiseHg
Scripts
Once I create a new project in web2py I add a few scripts to my main app folder:
web2py\applications\myapp\DebugWinpdb.bat:
C:\Python25\Scripts\winpdb.bat ..\..\web2py.py -i 127.0.0.1 -p8000 -mypassword
web2py\applications\myapp\DebugShell.bat:
C:\Python25\Scripts\winpdb.bat ..\..\web2py.py -S myapp -M
web2py\applications\myapp\Shell.bat:
python ..\..\web2py.py -S myapp -M
IDE
As others have stated you need to do some extra stuff to get autocomplete/intellisense for web2py no matter what IDE you use.
For me NetBeans was a good compromise between does-everything-if-only-you-can-figure-out-how (Eclipse/PyDev) and does-the-basics-but-few-extras (PyScripter).
NetBeans Setup (Project Properties):
Python Category
Python Platform: Python 2.x (default is Jython)
Run Category
Main Module: web2py.py
Application Arguments: -i 127.0.0.1 -p 8000 -a mypassword
NetBeans Pros:
Tight Mercurial integration
Highlights which lines have been added, changed, or deleted in your source file as you edit it
Selective rollback of individual changes you've made since your last commit
One of the nicest visual diff viewers I have used
Python PEP8 style hints (fully customizable)
Name "foo" is not a valid class name according to your code style (CapitalizedWords)
Name "Bar" is not a valid function name according to your code style (lowercase_with_underscores)
Auto-format hotkey (corrects spacing around operators, etc)
Navigation within source file
semantically indexes current source file
organizes alphabetically by type (Class, method, attribute, etc)
makes even enormous style sheets manageable
NetBeans Cons:
Integrated Debugger doesn't work with web2py (that one really hurts)
Long startup time (but acceptably snappy for me once up and running)
Version Control
I use and highly recommend Mercurial for source control. As mentioned earlier, NetBeans has great support for Mercurial but there are some things I'd just rather do in TortoiseHg.
TortoiseHg Pros:
Shell overlay icons
Repository Explorer
view repos history with graphical display of branching/merging
one stop shop for Incoming, Outgoing, Push, Pull, Update, etc with button for Commit tool
Commit tool
Hunk Selection: cherry pick changes from within a file for more focused Commits
Add, Remove, Diff, Revert, Move, Remove, Forget
TortoiseHg Cons:
No easy way to drop directly into a command line
Bug that regularly prevents files from being removed during commit (waits indef for a lock to be released; running hg addremove from command line is a reliable workaround)
Publishing
I use a combination of WinSCP (for browsing), PuTTY (for terminal commands), and TortoiseHg (for push/pull of my repos) to work with my shared hosting account on Webfaction.
The first thing I do is set up public/private key encryption. If you are having trouble getting this set up between Windows and Linux, try these instructions from Andre Molnar. Short story is you need to generate your private key using ssh-keygen on Linux, copy it down to your Windows machine using WinSCP, then convert it for use with WinSCP and PuTTY.
Then add the following lines to your global mercurial.ini file:
[ui]
ssh = "C:\Program Files\TortoiseHg\TortoisePlink.exe" -ssh -2 -i "c:\path\to\your\privatekey.ppk"
Even if you have to connect to multiple servers, you need only copy your public key to each of the different servers. You'll also want to let WinSCP and PuTTY know where your private key is located, but those are fairly easy to figure out.
Try the new web2py admin interface in trunk. It has a web based mercurial interface and a google deploy interface.
In web2py you can edit applications/admin/models/0.py and set
TEXT_EDITOR = 'amy'
And you will get the web based Amy editor with autocompletion. It is not default because because it does not work with some browsers and because autocompletion is not as good as eclipse. It may work for you.
You can use web2py with Eclipse but you need a minor workaround to let Eclipse know about the web2py environment. It is explained here.
I know other users have used other IDEs with web2py, for example WinIDE and pyCharm. I suggest you ask on the web2py mailing list where people are very helpful.
I'm pretty sure that the 'one-click setup script' to do all that you are looking for does not exist (at the moment). But don't be put off - you can achieve a nice development environment to suit your needs and there are lots of choices.
Although I develop on Windows, I like the setup I have as it's more of a 'Unixy' way of thinking whereby I have a number of tools each doing a specific task. Once you get a workflow setup you can be very productive - although I realise it may look a bit confusing initially coming from a Visual Studio world.
Below I outline what I've settled on. I'm sure others will have their own recommendations. Pick the options you like best.
(There should be hyperlinks to useful software below but I don't have enough reputation to include more than 1 link...)
For developing on Windows I'm enjoying using Pyscripter. It's free, fast (compared to Aptana / Eclipse / Netbeans etc) and has some nice features (dark theme, integrated python console and code explorer to name a few).
To get code completion / intellisense to work for web2py you need to add some code to your model / controller files because of the way web2py works. There are some instructions in this discussion topic on the web2py group.
web2py has a great error ticketing system built in (see the web2py book chapter 3). For more comprehensive debugging, pydb seems to be the way to go. Just put the code below as a breakpoint:
import pydb
pydb.debugger()
and it'll take you to the debugger.
I use TortoiseHg for Mercurial integration and it works wonderfully. Combine that with winscp and you can deploy easily.
Caveats: I work in OS X, and do most of my coding in BBEdit.
That said, I've used both Wing and Komodo IDE for web2py debugging, and they've both worked quite well for me. I haven't tried NetBeans in a while now; when I did the Python support seemed a little rough around the edges. And I've never had the time or patience to come up to speed with Eclipse; it's filed in my mental file cabinet with Emacs, no doubt unjustly to Eclipse and/or Emacs.
(And I'll echo mdipierro's recommendation to try the web2py mailing list; it's really indispensable--one of web2py's strongest points.)
Have you considered using fewer tools? Both Python and web2py don't require a whole lot of code to get a lot accomplished. web2py only adds 10 or 15 new function calls (besides the HTML helpers and validators). You might find that Eclipse and other IDEs actually get in the way. Setting up new apps in web2py is simple through the admin system. Since the new app scaffolding copies the welcome app, you can customize new app setup by editing the welcome app. With Mercurial (or Git, Subversion or Bazaar) you can set up a server on your machine or with one of the public sites and either push or pull updates to your production server. Keep it simple, I say.
we are using web2py framework for all our web application needs and this is our setup :
OS - Ubuntu up-to-date
IDE - Aptana Studio 3.0 with pyDev
Version Control - git
Python 2.7
Browser for developing phase : Chrome
I've found the Wing IDE debugger to be very useful. It's a powerful debugger across the board, and also can be configured to do remote debugging, which is really important when you are running web2py on a no-GUI remote machine (e.g. at Amazon Web Services).

What is the best way to integrate an external build tool into Eclipse?

I've just started using Eclipse for Python development since we can make use of a lovely plugin I've found to enable distributed pair-programming. Anyway, the next step to getting Eclipse to integrate properly with our existing environment, would be finding a way to drive our current build tool (Waf) from within the IDE.
So the question is, is there a way I can set up Eclipse to drive Waf in a Make-like fashion? I see for Make it has some quite advanced functionality, such as being able to work out what targets are available etc. Bonus points for telling me if there is a way I could go as far as this! (I suspect the answer is that this is all built in to the Make plugin for Ecplipse).
In eclipse CDT I run waf by simply changing the build program in
ProjectPreferences->C/C++ Build->BuilderSettings
Choose External builder and then put in the path to waf
for example I use
/Users/mark/bin/waf -v -k -j2
Note that waf and make do not agree on the -j setting and you have to give i explicitly and not use the eclipse dialog.
You can use the Make targets view add the targets to call waf e.g. configure, build etc.
One issue I had is that Eclipse is hard coded to see the output from Make say Make when i changes directory so I had to patch waf
see waf issue
You could try and define a Custom builder, calling Waf with the appropriate options for the python compilation step.
(From eclipsejdt alcatel-lucent manual)
That picture (not related to Waf at all) illustrates the fact a builder can be defined as an external tool (meaning any .bat or shell you may want to call)
In that "eclipsejdt" example, the custom builder was configured like so:
To set up the builder, bring up the property dialog for project "jex1p" by selecting the project in the Package Explorer and selecting Project > Properties > Builders. Then click New..., select Program, and click OK.
Configure the builder Main tab using values:
Name : nmbldr_pre
Location : ${system_path:ksh}
Working Directory: ${build_project}
Arguments : nmbldr -p 2 -t ${build_type} -s jpre
As VonC says, the elegant way is to use a Custom builder.
Alternatively it is less work (in the short term) to hack together an ant script to do the heavy lifting and define an external builder to configure it onto the project. You may find the drawbacks of an external builder (e.g. no incremental support) mean it is worth investing the effort to do it "properly".

vb6 xcopy deployment

Can any one tell me how to convert an legacy application which is vb6 ( COM dll's ocx and exes) to use Regfree COM .
I tried opening the dlls in visual studio and created manifest file, but some of the dlls it is giving error.
Is there any tools out there which will help me to do this process?
I tried a tool from codeproject which is called regsvr42, which is not creating the manifest fully.
I used tools like PE explorer where I get all the typelib information , but converting them into manifest files is too difficult.
We have started migrating that to .NET, for some months we have to deploy it, it will easier if it is xcopy based deployment.
To create manifest files you can try to use Make My Manifest from http://mmm4vb6.atom5.com/.
EDIT The MMM website is down. I see here that the author was having trouble with their hosting and has provided another location to get Make My Manifest - download it here.
If you can control creation of objects you can use DirectCOM from http://www.thecommon.net/10.html
Keep in mind that if one of used DLLs or OCXs is creating other COM objects dynamically with CreateObject calls, that reference will not be stored in vbp project file and you won't get full manifest file. Probably you will have to catch object creations while the application is running. Depends.exe application can profile running application and report all used dlls. I don't know if there is tool that can find additional COM related information.
There is an excellent walkthrough of what to do in this article on MSDN: Registration-Free Activation of COM Components: A Walkthrough.
Make My Manifest can accomodate late binding as well as early binding. You simply have to add the references to the late-bound dependencies manually, by file location or by ProgId.
You might look at http://mmm4vb6.atom5.com/mmm-demo-1248.html for additional help in using the utility.
MakeMyManifest is well spoken of as an automatic tool for creating manifests for VB6 projects, haven't tried it myself.
DirectCOM also has fans, again I haven't tried it.
EDIT The MMM website is down. I see here that the author was having trouble with their hosting and has provided another location to get Make My Manifest - download it here.
There is a semi-automatic technique. You can create the manifests with Visual Studio 2008 (you can use a free version like Visual Basic Express Edition). Then make a couple of edits by hand to make the manifests suitable for use from VB6. See this section of this MSDN article for step-by-step instructions - ignore the rest of the article which is about ClickOnce.