A process running in a devcontainer may need its container’s runtime name for logging or tracking purposes. Today, there is no way to reference that name in remoteEnv. The name field in devcontainer.json is a display name and may differ from the name shown by Docker or Podman.
Add a ${containerName} variable that can be used in remoteEnv:
{
"remoteEnv": {
"DEVCONTAINER_CONTAINER_NAME": "${containerName}"
}
}${containerName} should resolve to the actual runtime name of the primary development container. It should work for both newly created and reused containers, including the primary service in a Docker Compose setup. The tool should resolve it before running lifecycle commands or starting other processes to which remoteEnv applies.
This does not change how containers are named. Because the value is only known after container creation, ${containerName} would not be available in creation-time settings such as containerEnv or runArgs.
Related requests: container name in devcontainer.json (#184) and a CLI option to choose the name (#692).
A process running in a devcontainer may need its container’s runtime name for logging or tracking purposes. Today, there is no way to reference that name in remoteEnv. The name field in devcontainer.json is a display name and may differ from the name shown by Docker or Podman.
Add a ${containerName} variable that can be used in remoteEnv:
{ "remoteEnv": { "DEVCONTAINER_CONTAINER_NAME": "${containerName}" } }${containerName} should resolve to the actual runtime name of the primary development container. It should work for both newly created and reused containers, including the primary service in a Docker Compose setup. The tool should resolve it before running lifecycle commands or starting other processes to which remoteEnv applies.
This does not change how containers are named. Because the value is only known after container creation, ${containerName} would not be available in creation-time settings such as containerEnv or runArgs.
Related requests: container name in devcontainer.json (#184) and a CLI option to choose the name (#692).