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Dev Container

The .devcontainer/ directory at the repo root configures a fully-featured development environment based on Ubuntu 22.04. It includes everything needed to build Turmeric, run tests, and develop the language itself:

On first start the container runs cmake configure + cmake --build so the build/ directory is ready immediately. The directory is also added to PATH, so tur, tur_eval_basic, and tur_eval_sandbox are runnable directly without a ./build/ prefix.

VS Code

Prerequisites

Install the Dev Containers extension (ms-vscode-remote.remote-containers).

Docker must be running.

Open the project in the container

  1. Open the repo folder in VS Code.
  2. A notification appears: "Reopen in Container" -- click it.

Or open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P) and run:

Dev Containers: Reopen in Container

  1. VS Code builds the Docker image on the first run (a few minutes). Subsequent opens reuse the cached image.

  2. Once attached, open a terminal (Ctrl+`` `) -- the project is at/workspaces/turmericandturis already onPATH`.

Run just tasks

just          # debug build
just test     # build + test suite
just repl     # interactive REPL
just docs     # regenerate HTML docs from docstrings
just web-dev  # Vite dev server for the web REPL

Rebuild the container

If you change .devcontainer/Dockerfile or devcontainer.json, rebuild from the Command Palette:

Dev Containers: Rebuild Container

CLI

The @devcontainers/cli package provides a devcontainer command that drives the same spec VS Code uses.

Prerequisites

Docker must be running.

Install the CLI once:

npm install -g @devcontainers/cli

Start the container

devcontainer up --workspace-folder .

This builds the image (first run only), starts the container, mounts the workspace, and runs the postCreateCommand (cmake configure + build).

Open an interactive shell

devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . bash

Inside the shell, the workspace is at /workspaces/turmeric and build/ is on PATH:

just test     # run the test suite
tur repl      # start the Turmeric REPL
tur run examples/cellular-automata.tur

Run a single command non-interactively

devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . just test
devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . tur run examples/cellular-automata.tur

Stop the container

docker ps                        # find the container name
docker stop <container-name>

What is pre-installed

Tool Version Purpose
GCC / Clang system (Ubuntu 22.04) C11 compiler
CMake 3.22+ Build system
just latest Project task runner
libedit system REPL line editing
Python 3 system gendocs.py, doctest.py, guide tools
Node.js 20 LTS Web REPL (Vite), web build
clangd bundled with C++ devcontainer Code intelligence

clangd is configured via .clangd to use build/compile_commands.json, which is generated automatically during cmake configure. No manual setup is needed.

See also