Using an IDE while developing on a docker container

Question

There is something that I am not getting when developing an application while using docker containers.

Lets say I am developing a java application and

Answer 1

You have the option to run the IDE as a docker container as well, so you don’t need to install anything on your machine.

To do so, you need:
- docker
- X11
- an IDE of your choice.

Take a look at this java project which runs java8 and gradle inside an IntelliJ IDE:

https://github.com/marioluan/java-data-structures

The setup is pretty straightforward:

Dockerfile

FROM openjdk:8-jdk-alpine

# ttf-dejavu is required to render GUI under X11: https://github.com/docker-library/openjdk/issues/73
RUN apk --update add --no-cache ttf-dejavu

# install intellij
RUN wget -O /tmp/idea.tar.gz https://download-cf.jetbrains.com/idea/ideaIC-2017.3.4.tar.gz \
    && mkdir -p /usr/share/intellij \
    && tar -xf /tmp/idea.tar.gz --strip-components=1 -C /usr/share/intellij \
    && rm /tmp/idea.tar.gz

docker-compose.yml

version: '3'
services:
  intellij:
    build: .
    environment:
      - DISPLAY=$DISPLAY
    volumes:
      - /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix
      - /your/workspace:/tmp/your/workspace
      - idea_cache:/root/.IdeaIC2017.3
      - java_cache:/root/.java
    working_dir: $APP_ROOT
    command: /usr/share/intellij/bin/idea.sh
volumes:
  idea_cache:
  java_cache: