Speciftying a DevContainer in gem5 allows for users to quickly create an
environment in which they can develop, build, and run gem5. The
".devcontainer/devcontainer.json" file specifies the properties of the
container. In this commit they are as follows:
1. The Docker image ghcr.io/gem5/devcontainer. This is built from
"util/dockerfiles/devcontainer". This Dockerfile provides all
dependencies and a pre-built gem5 binary from the current main branch
(added to "/usr/local/bin"). In order to support this Docker container
on different platforms we use the Docker multi-platform feature. As
such, this must be built using `docker buildx bake devcontainer --push`
which reads the `docker-bake.hcl file for the specification of the
multi-platform image.
2. Visual Studio extensions. This is a list of Visual Studio Code
extensions useful when developing gem5. They are automatically added the
Visual Studio dev container.
3. Features. Features are enhancemets that can be added to a
DevContainer. Normally they are libraries and other commonly used tools
to be included in the Container. As we have our dependencies specified
in the Dockerfile here we select one to enable Docker inside the
container, one to enable the Github CLI, one to improve Linting, and
finally one to enable the vscode CLI.
4. The On Create Command : This command allows us to specify commands to
be run after the DevContainer is created. In this case we execute
".devcontainer/on-create.sh" which, right now, refreshes the git index
and installed the pre-commit checks.
