pks devcontainer wizard

pks devcontainer wizard builds a .devcontainer/devcontainer.json through prompts instead of flags. It covers everything pks devcontainer init does, and adds template discovery from NuGet, prompting for a template's required environment variables, and extension recommendations derived from the features you pick.

The wizard needs an interactive terminal. It uses selection prompts and key input throughout, so it is not scriptable — use init in CI.

Synopsis

pks devcontainer wizard [options]

Prerequisites

• An interactive terminal. Selection prompts, multi-selects, and masked input are used at every step.
• A writable output directory. The wizard confirms before overwriting an existing configuration, unless -f is set.
• Network access to a NuGet source, only when --from-templates is used.

Walk through the wizard

Run it from the repository you want to configure:

pks devcontainer wizard

The wizard proceeds through six steps.

1. Basic settings. Name the configuration, then pick a template or supply a custom base image. In --expert-mode you are also asked whether to use Docker Compose.
2. Template selection. Built-in templates are listed. With --from-templates, NuGet-discovered templates are added to the list.
3. Features. A multi-select over the feature registry. When a template was chosen, the list is scoped to that template's optional features. Categories are browsable.
4. Environment variables. Shown only when the selected template declares required environment variables. Values whose name contains token, secret, key, or password are read masked, and the wizard offers to reuse a matching variable already exported in your shell.
5. Extensions. Recommended VS Code extensions derived from the features you selected, plus manual entry of your own.
6. Advanced settings. Only in --expert-mode: forwarded ports, environment variables, and a post-create command.

A review step summarizes the configuration and asks for confirmation, then the files are generated the same way init generates them.

Verify

pks devcontainer validate --strict

The configuration the wizard wrote should report zero errors and zero warnings.

Options

Troubleshooting

No NuGet templates appear with --from-templates. Discovery searches the pks-devcontainers tag first, then falls back to the pks-cli tag filtered by devcontainer-related keywords in tags, title, and description. On any exception it warns and continues with built-in templates only. Run with --debug to see which sources were queried and what each tag returned.

Step 4 never appears. Environment-variable prompting only runs when the selected template declares required variables. Most built-in templates declare none.

The wizard hangs or errors in CI. It requires a TTY. Use pks devcontainer init for non-interactive generation.

A prompt echoes asterisks. Variable names containing token, secret, key, or password are matched case-insensitively and read as masked input.

See also

• pks devcontainer init — the flag-driven, scriptable equivalent
• pks devcontainer validate — lint the configuration the wizard produced
• pks devcontainer spawn — run the configuration in a Docker volume
• pks devcontainer — the command group and its mental model