The support for custom features in Dev Containers is a huge improvement to the process of customizing images quickly and easily. The convenience and simplicity can have a cost – performance. Trying to customize a container using a feature recently, I struggled with an incredibly long build time. This is how I improved the process.

Git’s safe directory configuration helps to protect users, but it can create challenges. This is especially true when using Hugo with Azure Static Web Sites. In that case, you’re dealing with an Action that bind-mounts the source code into a container. This requires some special handling.

BuildKit provides native support for caching layers to improve build times. In this post, we’ll explore implementing gha, inline, and registry caches with GHCR and GitHub Actions.

The third and final part of our exploration of Features and creating a simple feature. Now it’s time to dive deeper into Linux scripting to create an entrypoint for the non-root users.

Sometimes scripting in containers just isn’t enough. We need modular, reusable components to create repeatable practices. We need to implement our first Feature.