How to Backup DevContainer State to Avoid Losing Changes on Rebuild

[Ekanshh]

Hello!

I'm new to using VSCode DevContainers, and I’ve set up a development environment that I’d like to save. I've customized a lot of settings and installed various tools inside the container, and I'm worried that if I accidentally rebuild it, I might lose all those changes.

Is there a way to "backup" the current container image so that I can use it again later with all my current settings and installations intact?

Any step-by-step guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help! 😊

[bamurtaugh]

Thanks for opening this issue! How did you customize your dev container? If the changes are included in the devcontainer.json or Dockerfile, and you've saved the files (and even potentially committed them to the source control of your repo), a rebuild will call upon those same file(s)!

[AlvaroRausell]

Hello @Ekanshh! While I suggest you do what @bamurtaugh pointed out - in the end, that is the entire purpose of devcontainers - if you really want to back it up before rebuilding it consider following the docker documentation regarding backups and restoring containers.