Devcontainer support

[alaurie]

This pull request introduces initial support for developing the Hugo site on AlmaLinux within a devcontainer. This setup enhances the development experience by providing a consistent, pre-configured environment directly from Visual Studio Code:

Devcontainer Features:

• VSCode Extensions: Automatically installs the following extensions for optimal Hugo development:
  budparr.language-hugo-vscode - Hugo syntax support
  ms-python.python - Python development support
  esbenp.prettier-vscode - Code formatting
  yzhang.markdown-all-in-one - Enhanced Markdown editing
  tamasfe.even-better-toml - TOML language support

• Terminal Configuration: Sets the integrated terminal to /bin/bash for a familiar shell experience.

• Port Forwarding: Configures port 1313 to be forwarded for Hugo's live server.

• User Configuration: Sets remoteUser to vscode, providing a secure, non-root user environment.

Dockerfile Setup:

• Base Image: Utilizes the latest AlmaLinux image for compatibility and security.
• System Updates: Ensures all system packages are up-to-date.
• Software Installation: Includes essential tools like git, python3, python3-pyyaml, wget, tar, shadow-utils, and sudo.
• Hugo Installation: Fetches and installs the latest Hugo extended binary for dynamic site generation.
• User Management: Creates and configures a vscode user with sudo privileges to enhance security and usability.
• Port Exposure: Exposes port 1313 to allow Hugo's development server to be accessed externally.

This setup aims to streamline the development process by automating the environment setup, ensuring consistency across different machines, and reducing the time spent on configuration. Please review and provide feedback or approval to merge.

[codyro]

This looks fantastic! I'll give it a test tomorrow morning (local) to see if I can find any quirks.

What do you think about adding what you typed up in the PR to a README.md in the .devcontainer folder so people can see what it does at a glance (without looking for this PR)?

[alaurie]

@codyro Good idea, have added!

[codyro]

I've made some comments/suggested changes. Feel free to use/tweak as you see fit.

I've also made a PR to your repo (alaurie#1) with the changes I commented on.

[codyro]

While this should be fine we should verify the site runs fine on the latest Hugo version (v0.139.4) as we currently pin the production site to 0.98.0. This was done at the time to ensure no surprise breakages between versions.

Similar with Python--we pin version 3.11, however we should be able to use the 3.12 in repositories (or we could pin 3.9 to match the devcontainer).

Ultimately I'd like to have a 1:1 environment with our production, so we have two options:

1. Update the devcontainer versions to match production (very old at this point)
2. Verify everything runs cleanly on the latest versions of Hugo and Python from the repos (3.12.x) and update the production site to match

I'm thinking option 2 is the move as I'm pretty sure most people working on the site aren't using an ancient version of Hugo..

[bennyvasquez]

as a note: I'm not sure the pinning you mentioned is actually working as intended. I recently (maybe as many as a few months ago) hit some snags due to outdated hugo installed on my laptop. I had to upgrade so that what I was doing would match the errors I was seeing as it deployed to dev.

[alaurie]

I think you're correct @bennyvasquez. The latest run I can see in GitHub actions uses the latest version 0.140.0

https://github.com/AlmaLinux/almalinux.org/actions/runs/12401185107/job/34620009233

[codyro]

Assuming we think this is ready to merge, I'll want to get a few community members to test it to ensure there are no lingering quirks and engage with anyone interested in helping out contributing (I just intend to ask in MatterMost, nothing fancy). Once we get some confirmation that everything works flawlessly, let's merge this as-is and then submit a new issue to add documentation. Or we could add documentation to this PR if we feel exceptionally motivated.

We could add a page (or multiple) on the wiki about how to use the devcontainers in projects to contribute (you said you're considering wiki after this, and I'll be looking to use it elsewhere).

[codyro]

Teamwork makes the dream work 🤝

[bennyvasquez]

Documentation is critical and should be added along with these updates, so I'd like it to be part of this PR.

[codyro]

Documentation is critical and should be added along with these updates, so I'd like it to be part of this PR.

It doesn't affect production. It's essentially the equivalent of adding a utility script that's unused. The scope of it being in a single PR isn't really realistic.

Splitting it up will be more effective in this case.

[pastalian]

Is this intended only for docker users?
In my podman environment, it didn't work without adding --userns=keep-id to runArgs, which isn't available in docker so we can't simply add it here. I guess supporting both docker and podman out of the box is challenging.

[alaurie]

Is this intended only for docker users? In my podman environment, it didn't work without adding --userns=keep-id to runArgs, which isn't available in docker so we can't simply add it here. I guess supporting both docker and podman out of the box is challenging.

At the moment its just docker. I'll look into dual support with podman as well.

[alaurie]

@bennyvasquez @codyro

Documentation is critical and should be added along with these updates, so I'd like it to be part of this PR.

I've added in some further instructions in the readme.md around how the container is built and hugo live reloading on container start.

[bennyvasquez]

I'm good with the documentation you've created so far, @alaurie! Once we think this is ready for everyone to adopt/use for themselves, adding a mention of it to the the root README would be awesome.

[alaurie]

I'm good with the documentation you've created so far, @alaurie! Once we think this is ready for everyone to adopt/use for themselves, adding a mention of it to the the root README would be awesome.

I've added a section to root README and linked to the README in the devcontainer directory.

[bennyvasquez]

@codyro @alaurie are we waiting on anything else here? It looks to me like we're good to go. I haven't tested the docker deployment, but the steps seem sane to me, and I'm assuming we'll get bug reports if there are problems. :)

[alaurie]

Nothing on my end, its working and I updated the docs in the repo on this commit.