A template for new Python projects with Dev Container support

I've recently been learning more about Dev Containers, Codespaces, and Github templates, and just put together a project using them all.

A Dev Container is a way to use a Docker container as a development environment. The container can already be initialized with all the necessary environment dependencies, like the right version of Python and the desired development tools, so you can get to work immediately inside the container. As Python developers, we often achieve a similar outcome using virtual environments (venv) but Dev Containers work for any development environment, and can specify more than just the language and package dependencies. A Dev Container can even describe desired settings for the editor.

VS Code has support for Dev Containers via the Dev Containers extension. Github Codespaces is built around the idea of containers, since it's basically a VS Code editor that opens up the Dev Container for the given repository.

Since there was a lot of interest in my post on setting up a Python project, I've made a Dev Container version of my standard Python project setup:

https://github.com/pamelafox/python-project-template

You can open that repository in Codespaces immediately to see what it's like (by clicking the Code dropdown), or you can make a new repository based off that repository (since I've marked it as a template), and start writing your own code inside it.

I personally make a lot of new Python projects lately, since I'm experimenting with so much Python for my job, so I'm looking forward to having a 1-click project setup with all my favorite tools for code quality and testing baked right in. Yay for programmer productivity! 🎉

Happy Hacktoberfest!

Every year, DigitalOcean runs an event called Hacktoberfest to encourage more folks to contribute to open source. They've introduced new rules this year to avoid the issues last year of floods of trivial not-helpful pull requests, and they're making sure all projects explicitly opt-in to participate. A lot of open source maintainers are doing it on their own time, and we'd love contributions, but we want the contributions to be in good faith.

Here are the projects and repositories that I've opted into Hacktoberfest this year:

• Recursive visualizations: An online tool for visualizing recursive Python call graphs, powered by Pyodide. See repo.
• Faded Parsons runner: An online tool for drag-and-drop Python coding problems (Pyodide-powered) See repo.
• Dis This: An online tool for disassembling Python code (Pyodide-powered, again! See repo.
• Translation Telephone: A website for playing a highly amusing translation game (Flask, Azure). See repo.
• Icon writer website: A website for generating text-only dock icons. Separate repos for website, Azure function, and Python package.
• pamelafox.org: My personal website (Flask, Google Spreadsheets, Azure). See repo.

For each of those repositories, I've tried to make sure there are at least a few issues in the issue tracker for people looking for ideas. I also welcome your own ideas too! As long as they're unit-tested, of course. 😄

Check out this blog post from my colleague to see what Python repositories we've opted in from the Microsoft organization, like the picologging library I've been hacking on lately.