Distrobox Dev Env

This repository contains the configuration for my personal development environment, built upon Distrobox. The main goal is to quickly and reliably recreate a complete development environment on any machine running Podman or Docker.

As a primary user of Fedora Silverblue, this project allows me to maintain a minimal and immutable base OS while having a rich, customized development environment inside a container.

Context

I am a developer who values the robustness of Fedora Silverblue. For my development workflow, I rely on:

• Distrobox to create development containers that seamlessly integrate with the host.
• Neovim with the LazyVim configuration as my primary code editor for a modern and efficient development experience.
• Nerd Fonts for optimal display of icons and symbols in my terminal and editor.

This repository centralizes the configuration of this environment to make it easily deployable.

Project Structure

.
├── Containerfile
├── dnf_package_fedora_42
├── README.md
└── utils
    └── google-cloud-sdk.repo

• Containerfile: The build file for the image, based on fedora-toolbox:42.
• dnf_package_fedora_42: The list of DNF packages to be installed in the image.
• utils/: Contains utility files shared across different configurations.
• README.md: This file.

Development Environment Setup (from Fedora Silverblue)

Here are the steps to set up the complete development environment from a fresh Fedora Silverblue installation.

1. Prerequisites: Install Distrobox

On Fedora Silverblue, distrobox is usually pre-installed. If not, you can install it with the following command:

rpm-ostree install distrobox

Follow the instructions and reboot your machine to apply the changes.

2. Install Nerd Fonts

LazyVim and other command-line tools use icons that require a "Nerd Font". We will install the "Hack" font.

# Download the font
curl -o /tmp/Hack.zip -L https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases/download/v3.4.0/Hack.zip

# Create local font directory and unzip
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fonts
unzip -d ~/.local/share/fonts /tmp/Hack.zip

# Update the font cache
fc-cache -fv

# Clean up
rm /tmp/Hack.zip

Natively the terminal of the Sylverblue (pystix) will use the fonts.

3. Clone This Repository

Clone this repository into a directory of your choice on your host machine.

git clone https://github.com/PaulBarriere/distrobox-dev.git ~/dev_config
cd ~/dev_config

4. Put the distrobox configuration file :

Create a symbolic link from the distrobox config file to the .config path :

mkdir ~/.config/distrobox
ln -s ./distrobox.conf ~/.config/distrobox/distrobox.conf

5. Build the Distrobox Image

Build the image :

podman build --pull="always" -t distrobox-dev .

6. Create and Launch the Distrobox Container

Once the image is built, you can create a Distrobox container from it.

distrobox create --image distrobox-dev --name distro-dev

To enter your new development environment:

distrobox enter distro-dev

7. Post-Installation Configuration (inside the Distrobox)

Once inside the distrobox there are two steps needed :

• Bring your keepass file.
• Use chezmoi to import the configuration files.

This environment includes chezmoi to manage your configuration files (dotfiles). Initialize it with your dotfiles repository.

chezmoi init <YOUR_DOTFILES_REPO>
chezmoi apply

Image Contents

For now, there is only one image for my dev containers. The base image is registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-toolbox:42.

Installed Packages and Configurations:

• Google Cloud SDK: The repository is configured for an easy installation of gcloud tools.
• DNF Packages: A list of packages is installed from the dnf_package_fedora_42 file, including essential development tools.
• Lazygit: A simple terminal UI for Git, installed via COPR.
• Starship: A customizable cross-shell prompt.
• ZSH: Set as the default shell for the user.
• ChezMoi: A tool to manage your configuration files (dotfiles).
• Go: Golang programming langage.
• keepassxc: For handling ".kdbx" files.

Next steps:

• Create a modular way of building an image. All dev containers does not need golang, terraform, gcloud, ...
• Use buildah to build and remove Containerfile for bash scripts.