[Hack Update] 056-CosmicTroubleshooting - support for Dev Containers

[kaluzaaa]

Adding support for Visual Studio Code Dev Containers and GitHub Codespaces for CosmicTroubleshooting

[istavrinides]

I agree with Dev Containers but since we shouldn't instruct students to fork the repo, I doubt GitHub Codespaces is a valid option.

[jrzyshr]

Hi Łukasz! Thanks for your proposed update. The WTH v-Team is reviewing this and may consider adding this as an idea for multiple hacks to support students who may not have the ability to install tooling on their local workstations.

While the WTH repo is open source and public, we generally do NOT share it with hack attendees before or during a hack. Instead, hack attendees should always use the WTH website, which features only the student guides: https://aka.ms/wth

We do NOT want students cloning the entire WTH repo (which has the Coach guides :)). Instead, we provide students with a "Resources.zip" that contains all of the resources/code they will need to complete the challenges. Currently, it is the coach/host's responsibility to create the "Resources.zip" file from the contents of the /Student/Resources folder of the hack. We are looking into options to automatically create these ZIP files and publish them to an online location for downloading to make it easier for Coaches & Students.

With that said, we did some testing of both VS Dev Containers and GH codespaces this week. The VS Dev Container works well, but requires students to install both Docker Desktop & WSL on their Windows workstations. Installing Docker + WSL is often the biggest barrier for most organizations where they don't have administrator access on their workstations. If they can install those two things, then there's likely not much more value a VS Dev Container would add IMO?

GH Codespaces makes things easier by being 100% in the browser. However, it would require students to:
1.) Create/have a GitHub account.
2.) Unpack the Resources.zip file locally or in Azure Cloud Shell
3.) Commit the contents to a new Git repo and push it to GitHub.com.
4.) Use GH Codespaces from the newly hosted repo in the student's own account.

This seems like the better option to me. However, I would question how much value does it add over having a student use the Azure Cloud Shell environment to complete the hack if they are not able to install the tooling locally?