Christos Polydorou

Containers have been around for almost a decade and can now be considered as the de-facto approach to application development. From a test and development MySQL server to the most famous internet services like Google and Netflix, containers are the way to run modern applications. So, what is a container exactly? Containers are packages of software that contain all of the necessary elements to run in any environment. In this way, containers virtualize the operating system and run anywhere, from a private data center to the public cloud or even on a developer’s personal laptop. The number of persons that are using containers has skyrocketed in recent years, making Docker Desktop the major platform for running containers on Windows and macOS systems. Being a container user myself, I realized that a set of functions in Powershell would make my life a lot easier when it comes to the standard operations with Docker Desktop. I've put together all the functions that I needed at some point ...

Developing using containers offers the ability to use different environments and software without having to install them on your development workstation, while at the same time you conserve a lot of system resources avoiding the use of virtual machines. Visual Studio Code has been receiving a lot of functionality towards that end with a great deal of extensions and part of that is targeting Azure template developement.  We can use VS Code to develop our code and then use a container with all the Azure tools to deploy. This post describes this very process, from docker installation to VS Code configuration and finally template deployment.  First we need to install all the necessary components on our system. This includes Docker Desktop, Visual Studio Code and a patch for the linux kernel of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2). You can find Docker Desktop on the official Docker page here  and VS Code on its page over here . The Docker installation wizard will add any requir...