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Get Into Teaching website - Dev container & Codespaces

The repository ships a dev container so that anyone — developers and content editors alike — can run a full local copy of the website without installing Ruby, Node, PostgreSQL or Redis themselves. Everything is installed, configured and started for you.

You can use it two ways:

  • GitHub Codespaces — runs in the cloud, nothing to install. Best for content editors.
  • VS Code on your own machine — runs in Docker locally. Best for developers.

Option 1: GitHub Codespaces (recommended for content editors)

  1. On the repository page in GitHub, click Code → Codespaces → Create codespace on master (or on your branch).
  2. Wait for it to build. The first build takes a few minutes while it installs everything; you can watch the progress in the terminal.
  3. When setup finishes, the website starts automatically and a notification offers to open it in your browser. If you miss it, open the Ports panel and click the globe icon next to port 3000.

Secrets

The website boots against the shared test API using a token that is already committed in .env.development, so no extra configuration is normally needed. If you need to point at a different API, add the relevant values as Codespaces secrets for the get-into-teaching-app repository.

Prerequisites:

Steps:

  1. Open the repository folder in VS Code.
  2. When prompted, click Reopen in Container (or run Dev Containers: Reopen in Container from the command palette).
  3. Wait for the build to finish. As with Codespaces, the website starts automatically and opens on port 3000 once everything is ready.

What happens automatically

When the container is created it:

  1. Installs the build tools and system libraries the app needs.
  2. Installs the Ruby gems, JavaScript packages and prepares the database (create, migrate and seed) by running bin/setup — the same script used for local development.
  3. Starts the app (Rails, the asset server and the background worker) via bin/dev as soon as setup has finished, and opens it in your browser on port 3000.

The first build takes a few minutes. Opening the container again later is fast because everything is already installed.

Starting and stopping the website

The website runs in the Start Get Into Teaching terminal (visible in the terminal panel). To stop it, click into that terminal and press Ctrl+C. To start it again, run:

bin/dev

Viewing the database

The PostgreSQL extension (ms-ossdata.vscode-pgsql) is installed automatically. To browse the database:

  1. Open the PostgreSQL panel from the Activity Bar and add a connection.

  2. Enter the following connection details:

    Setting Value
    Host postgres
    Port 5432
    User postgres
    Password postgres
    Database git_service_dev (use git_service_test for the test database)

These match the DB_* values set for the container in .devcontainer/docker-compose.yml.

Troubleshooting

  • The website didn't open. Open the Ports panel and click the globe icon next to port 3000, or run bin/dev in a terminal.
  • A Ruby LSP error appears right after the container opens. The editor can try to start before setup has finished installing gems. Wait for setup to complete, then run Developer: Reload Window from the command palette.
  • You changed something in .devcontainer/. Run Dev Containers: Rebuild Container (use Rebuild Without Cache if you added system packages) so the changes take effect.

For developers: how it's wired up

All configuration lives in .devcontainer/:

  • devcontainer.json — the Ruby/Node versions, VS Code extensions and settings, forwarded ports and the postCreateCommand.
  • docker-compose.yml — the app, PostgreSQL and Redis services, plus the DB_* and REDIS_URL environment variables the app reads.
  • boot.sh — runs once after the container is created: installs the locked Bundler version, runs bin/setup, and writes a "ready" marker when done.
  • start-app.sh — launched by the Start Get Into Teaching task; waits for the ready marker, then runs bin/dev.

Forwarded ports: 3000 (website), 5432 (PostgreSQL) and 6379 (Redis).