Bluefin - use podman distrobox container in vscode

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 …

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!

1 Like