RFE: Ability to add devcontainer/devfile files to a workspace w/o ansible-creator

[cidrblock]

This would allow the user to use a devcontainer w/o ever having to install any dev tools locally.

We would need to suggest/depend on the devcontainer extension or provide instructions for the install

Ideally, the devcontainer files would be generated from ansible-creator preriodically or trggered so there was no manul upkeep of those files. (kept in the extension repo, but kept updated)

Logging this here for dicussion/thoughts

[netopsengineer]

@cidrblock

This would allow the user to use a devcontainer w/o ever having to install any dev tools locally.

I think this is an excellent idea, and helps with onboarding and Day 2 activities in the ecosystem, where often times we help new users get tools installed locally, maybe with a venv, maybe with Poetry, on Windows with WSL, on Mac, maybe even deployed with scripting, and then they are essentially bound to that version, as they are unsure what they should update, or how to update it, as they were likely drinking from a firehose while getting the initial environment stood up.

[jeffcpullen]

Just ran into this problem trying to create a new collection. I'm now stuck at a decision point of trying to figure out how to solve getting the dependencies installed locally so that I can switch to a devcontainer/devfile specifically to avoid modifying the local system.

Perhaps this should be an option above the creating playbooks/collections.

Options (I can think of) the user has to try and solve this are:
1 - Install via pip - Which may leave a mess of dependencies that they'll likely forget about and never update, and may be installed globally creating unforeseen issues.
2 - Go find the devcontainer/devfile setup proceedures that this tool is supposed to solve for them already
3 - Try and get a container running that they can attach to
4 - Have to switch systems to one that allows the installation of tools

In the cases that the user CAN install things locally through pip, or by starting a container, it would be really helpful to offer to do that in this user interface.

Option 1 - Make the python dependency installation simple
"Create temporary Python Virtual Environment to install system dependencies?" - Default = No
"Cleanup temporary Python Virtual Environment to install system dependencies?" - Default = Yes

Option 2 - Give some quick start scaffolding to get the devcontainer/devfile environment setup
"Add development container configurations to re-launch in container? [None, Docker, Podman] Default = None
"Add Devfile for remote development environments" [Yes, No] Default = No
"Development container source template URI" [https://github.com/ansible/<snip]

"Ansible development tools container image?" - Default =

[jeffcpullen]

Actually, all those suggestions I made are bad. The devcontainer/devfiles just need to be bundled in the extension. Everything else just makes it way too complicated. I didn't dawn on me that was the original suggestion until I'd walked away from the keyboard.