How can you run the Plutus Playground and serve the Haddock documentation from the VSCode DevContainer?

Question

I am still looking to settle on a dev environment for Plutus contracts. I am thinking about using VSCode with the devcontainer, but would like to know how well it all integrates. Is it easy to have the associated Playground and Haddock documentation alongside?

I am currently able to get cabal, Plutus server, Plutus Playground and Haddock docs in sync building Plutus in a nixos/nix container image. Would VSCode give me the same?

Answer 1

To run the Plutus Starter DevContainer from VSCode you have to:

1. Install docker and VSCode
2. Install Dev Containers and Remote Development extensions for VSCode
3. Run docker run -it --entrypoint /bin/bash inputoutput/plutus-starter-devcontainer:latest -s

You will initiate an instance of a Plutus Starter DevContainer, like this:

4. Then, open VSCode and from the Remote Explorer and under Dev Containers, select inputoutput/plutus-starter-devcontainer:latest and then open a terminal (Terminal - New Terminal)
5. Then run cd plutus-starter
6. cabal update
7. cabal build

You have built the plutus-starter project from the Dev Container. You can code and build any plutus project inside it, including the plutus-playground.