devc

devc is an alternate devcontainers CLI with a simplified interface. It's based on the upstream reference CLI, but ported to Rust by Claude and packaged as a single self-contained binary.

Currently macOS and Linux are supported. As a prerequisite, you need to have a Docker-compatible container runtime installed.

Quickstart

The CLI can be installed in a few ways.

# Install the CLI using Homebrew
brew install rameshvarun/tap/devc

# Or, use the install script, which downloads to ~/.local/bin
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rameshvarun/devc/main/install.sh | sh

# Or, download it manually from the releases page
# https://github.com/rameshvarun/devc/releases/latest

# Or, install from source
cargo install --git https://github.com/rameshvarun/devc --locked

Once the CLI is installed, switch to a project that has a .devcontainer spec.

cd project/ # Switch to your project's directory.
devc npm test # Run any command inside the container, starting it if it doesn't exist.
devc # Or, run with no arguments to get a shell inside the container.

Additional Usage

devc --help # Print usage information
devc --version # Print the devc version
devc down # Tear down the container

Motivation

Containers make it easy to create reproducible, sandboxed dev environments - that's why the devcontainers specification exists. Although well integrated into VSCode, devcontainers aren't as convenient to use from the command line. devc bridges that gap by providing a simplified interface for launching and using devcontainers.

# Using the reference CLI
devcontainer up
devcontainer exec npm test

# Using devc
devc npm test

Similar Projects

• devc - Same name, similar idea.
• brig - A similar concept written in Go. Brig treats containers as ephemeral whereas devc spins up persistent containers, which I generally prefer for devcontainers specifically.