Bluefin - use podman distrobox container in vscode

[klmcw]

I posted this in another thread. Adding here to make it more visible.

This is not the best solution; but it does work with some limitations.

Once the distrobox is created, and the vscode dependencies are added to it - you can use the Dev Containers: Attach to Running Container vscode command.

The reason to do this is:

• install different versions of a toolchain (e.g., Python 3.13, 3.14 and the freethreading versions of each)
• minimize disk utilization by installing these in 1 single container that is shared
• take advantage of the Ptyxis integration with podman as needed
• use the same container within VS Code

It does work - I even used the VSCode debugger with a Python program using the versions of Python I installed in the distrobox.

But there are downsides.

See this post comment for more details …

Trying to get vscode to attach to running container made with boxbuddy/distrobox -- docker doesn't see my containers at all

I finally took the time to work through getting vscode to open a remote connection to a running distrobox container. While not technically a devcontainer, the result seems to be similar. Here is what I discovered so far. Enjoy! bluefin - use podman distrobox container in vscode To use a bluefin distrobox in vscode as a devcontainer, do the following to create and attach to a running podman distrobox. However, there are some pretty severe limitations to doing this. But it does work. TL;DR - …

I will soon be adding another post about using docker to create a distrobox instead; and sharing the OCI image with vscode to create devcontainers for different projects. That is a different way to share the installation - without resorting to local layering.

Enjoy!