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Add "no-lockfile" as an option to "devcontainer.json" config file

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#1,282 0 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
68/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
typescript
Domain
cli

Research direction

Start by tracing how the existing --no-lockfile option is handled by the devcontainer up and build commands, then follow how devcontainer.json options are parsed. Done means noLockfile in devcontainer.json disables .devcontainer-lock.json generation and validation when the CLI is invoked indirectly.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Add a no-lockfile option to devcontainer.json to disable the generation and validation of .devcontainer-lock.json.

For example:

{
    "name": "my-devcontainer",
    "noLockfile": true
}

The CLI already supports:

devcontainer up --no-lockfile
devcontainer build --no-lockfile

However, there is currently no way to configure this behavior directly in devcontainer.json.

This is especially problematic when the Dev Container CLI is invoked indirectly by an editor or IDE. In that case, users do not necessarily control the CLI arguments and therefore cannot easily pass --no-lockfile.

In my workflow, I intentionally do not want a lockfile. When .devcontainer-lock.json is generated or changes, it can cause the environment to be considered out of date and trigger an unnecessary rebuild. Deleting the lockfile allows me to reconnect to the existing container without rebuilding it, but having to manually remove it is a poor workaround.

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
3k
Forks
461
Avg merge
18m
Merged PRs (30d)
5

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