Pre-build operations for VSCode Devcontainers?

[slobodaapl]

I am creating an integrated development environment for our devs and I need to be able to run a script, say my_script.sh before the devcontainer starts building and opening.

I cannot use initializeCommand cause the my_script.sh would dynamically modify the devcontainer.json -- so this needs to be able to happen before that file is loaded by VSCode for use.

Is there any way to do this?

[bamurtaugh]

Thanks for opening. I don't think there's a spec-supported way for modifying the devcontainer.json dynamically, but cc @chrmarti in case I'm missing something.

[chrmarti]

This is currently not possible. We could consider reloading the devcontainer.json after running any initializeCommand.

@slobodaapl Which parts of the devcontainer.json do you need to generate dynamically?

[slobodaapl]

@chrmarti With our script it should be able to modify the whole decontainer.json depending on user needs, including listing forwarded ports, changing the options, or adding new mounts. If devcontainer.json was loaded after initializeCommand that would be fantastic.