Taken from my research journal.

Update: I think this is the correct way to do this: https://code.visualstudio.com/remote/advancedcontainers/develop-remote-host

Update, June 2022: VSCode will attempt to pass your ssh agent through to your container, even through complex setups like the one I’m using here (hooking into a Docker container running on a remote ssh host.) It can do it, but it needs a little help! Once you’ve started the container using the instructions below, you can connect on your local machine (i.e. your laptop) with these instructions. First, open a terminal and run:

eval `ssh-agent -s`
ssh-add

Then, start VSCode from the terminal with code. Then, connect to the running Docker container on the remote host with the instructions below.

Here are instructions for developing inside a Docker container running on a remote host using VSCode. This method foregoes some of the niceties of VSCode, but honestly, it still works surprisingly well.

  1. Set up and switch to a Docker context for your remote server. This is a nice built-in feature of Docker, seemingly, and there are good instructions online. I forget the command for setting up the context, but the command to enable it is docker context use <your context>.
  2. There is some ssh-agent stuff that needs to be running on either your local machine or on the host or both…maybe. Starting ssh-agent and running ssh-add should be enough. This may just be needed in my situation because I’m dealing with private repositories.

  3. On your remote, build your image and start a container, manually mounting the working directory of the repo of interest. In my case:

    docker run -t -d --mount source=/home/gus/rtml-notebooks,target=/workspace,type=bind,consistency=cached rtml-notebooks /bin/bash

    -t -d keep it running in the background (or something). I think you’re expected to bind your working directory to /workspace inside the container; it seems like this is what VSCode wants. Replace the mounts with the correct paths in your filesystem, and replace the Docker image name with your Docker image.

  4. Open VSCode, navigate to the Remote Explorer, and select Containers from the dropdown. You should see the container you started, probably under “Other”. Click it to open. VSCode may complain about it not being started; try starting it/reopening it a few times from VSCode’s interface. Eventually VSCode will install itself inside the container and you’ll be good to go!