feat: add RFC for using devcontainers

Author: rokroskar

rfcs/014-devcontainer-spec/014-devcontainer-spec.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+- Start Date: (fill me in with today's date, YYYY-MM-DD)
+- Status: (One of Proposed, Accepted or Rejected)
+
+# Use devcontainer spec for Renku projects
+
+## Summary
+
+The [development container](https://containers.dev) concept grew out of a need for easily encapsulating
+runtime environments for developing software projects. It has now been turned into a spec with an ecosystem
+of tools growing around it; a project using a devcontainer definition can get a docker container provisioned
+locally by VSCode, remotely by codespaces, or even more remotely in any cloud using [devpod](https://devpod.sh).
+Devcontainers envision composing a runtime environment flexibly from basic components, minimizing the burden
+on the user/developer who just wants to get work done and doesn't want to worry about writing Dockerfiles or figuring
+out how to install the latest cuda libraries.
+
+The proposal here is to use the devcontainer concept for Renku projects.
+
+## Problem Statement
+
+Renku projects are currently bootstrapped via a template which creates a number of files that define the runtime
+for that project, e.g. the `Dockerfile` and depending on the languages used, some other supporting enviroment files.
+In order to be able to run images for Renku projects on the hosted infrastructure, we provide some base images that
+we know will work when used on e.g. renkulab.io. This has a number of issues:
+
+1. if users wants to modify just about anything other than installing python packages, they have to know how to write a Dockerfile (not easy)
+2. we need to maintain a library of docker images for a variety of project dependencies and scenarios (a huge pita)
+3. enabling new functionality is very difficult because it requires developing new docker images or adding things to existing ones
+
+## Key Assumptions
+
+We assume that we want to continue working in containers...
+
+## Possible Solutions
+
+Change nothing, it works!
+
+## Proposed solution
+
+* Create a devcontainer renku feature (see [here](https://github.com/rokroskar/renku-devcontainer-feature/))
+* Use `devcontainer.json` in renku projects (see [here](https://dev.renku.ch/projects/rokroskar/devcontainer-test))
+
+The end-result from the user's perspective is that there is no more Dockerfile; the only configuration left is something like this:
+
+```yaml
+{
+	"name": "Python 3.10",
+	"build": {
+		"context": "..",
+		"dockerfile": "../Dockerfile"
+	},
+	"features": {
+		"ghcr.io/rokroskar/renku-devcontainer-feature/renku:1": {},
+	},
+	"forwardPorts": [8888],
+	"remoteUser": "jovyan"
+}
+
+```
+
+(Ok there is a `Dockerfile` but it contains only a `FROM` line and nothing else).
+
+If I now, for example, wanted to add cuda to this project, all I need to do is add the feature:
+
+```yaml
+{
+	"name": "Python 3.10",
+	"build": {
+		"context": "..",
+		"dockerfile": "../Dockerfile"
+	},
+	"features": {
+		"ghcr.io/rokroskar/renku-devcontainer-feature/renku:1": {},
+        "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/nvidia-cuda:1": {}
+	},
+	"forwardPorts": [8888],
+	"remoteUser": "jovyan"
+}
+
+```
+
+The gitlab-ci looks like this:
+
+```yaml
+...
+  script: |
+    CI_COMMIT_SHA_7=$(echo $CI_COMMIT_SHA | cut -c1-7)
+    devcontainer build --workspace-folder . --push true --image-name ${CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE}:${CI_COMMIT_SHA_7}
+```
+
+The user can now launch this project on any RenkuLab instance as before, _and_ in their local VSCode they can spin it up with the built-in devcontainer tooling.
+This means that we essentially no longer have to worry about local sessions.
+
+The extra bonus is that with a tool like `devpod`, users can launch their projects on any other cloud, with no changes required to the project itself.
+
+An additional benefit is that we can have some control over which versions of the Renku CLI are installed by controlling the release of the renku feature rather than
+having to modify/update users' projects.
+
+If we decide to use devcontainers for projects, we can think about deeper changes for using this ecosystem, e.g. replacing parts of the notebook service / amalthea or
+at least making them devcontainer-aware.
+
+## Drawbacks
+
+One drawback is that this cannot only be done in templates but will require changes to the UI as well so the blast radius of this change isn't very small.
+
+Another problem is that until we have some deeper support for the spec in our services, some features of the devcontainer will not be used, notably the lifecycle hooks.
+
+## Rationale and Alternatives
+
+This would make Renku projects much more portable and interoperable while at the same time allowing us to _completely stop supporting an entire library of docker images_.
+
+## Unresolved questions
+
+* What to do about data sources / mounts? We currently do some custom things for data source management and it's not obvious how that can translate into this context.