By working in Docker containers, all of our code will work in the same environment. This helps mitigate the issue of developing on different platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux and its flavors), versions and hardware.

• Go to https://code.visualstudio.com/download and download the version for your platform and install it.

  
• In VS Code, install the Docker Container extension.
  

• As an example, we will create a folder proj that will contain a file Dockerfile (MUST BE THAT NAME, NO EXTENSION) that will create a Linux based environment with Python, PIP, Node.js, and NPM installed.

• In the Dockerfile, put this exact code

  • This code is commented to help understand what is happening.

  • The first line gets the image to start from (i.e. a version of Ubuntu). It is located online at the  Docker Hub . You can search for other images to start with for your own configurations. You can also upload your own.

  • apt-get installs the packages.

    • -y means to automatically say...

• Go to  Get Docker and download and install the Docker version for your platform

  • You have to install Docker Desktop for Mac

  • You have to install Docker Desktop for Windows

    • NOTE (IMPORTANT): Follow the instructions to install WSL 2 backend. This is what allows you to run Linux Docker container on a Windows machine.

  • You have to install Docker for Linux (there isn’t a Docker Desktop) for Linux at the time of this writing

• Check to make sure your Docker is installed by going to the terminal and checking the Docker version with this command.

 

 docker --version