Posts tagged GitHub Codespaces
Using environment variables in a devcontainer
- 04 September 2023
Hardcoded variables are never a good idea and one solution is the update the during deployment with Ansible for example. Another option is to set read those variables from the environment and maintaining them via systemd via a separate environment file or as part of the container deployment.
The example below is how Django reads the environment variables to configure the database connection to Postgresql. This way the application can easily be configured as is described in Environment variables set by systemd and the application itself never has to be modified or redeployed.
Run Terraform within GitHub Codespaces
- 20 August 2022
Using GitHub Codespaces allows you to work on your code from almost any place in the world without an Internet connection. Only the devcontainers powering Codespaces are mended to be short-lived and not contain any credentials. This may pose a challenge when you’re depending on remote services like Terraform Cloud that require an API-token to work properly.
Most devcontainers are following the Microsoft devcontainer template and those are based on Debian which gives you access to a huge repository of packaged software. Only Terraform isn’t part of the standard Debian repository, but HashiCorp provides its own repository that can be added. Let’s start by extending the Dockerfile to add the repository and install the Terraform package as highlighted below.