VS code docker extension

For developers who containerize their applications and who already use VS code as their dev editor, they probably already know the docker extension.The docker extension appears as a very handy tool to write up a dockerfile, build, publish and deploy the image. The only part that doesn't make too much sense to me is the deploy. The only option it provides is Deploy to Azure App Service, which, IMHO, is not really a container native service.

Would Azure Container Instances a better default host for deployments? Most developers (pure guessing though...) would probably just use the deployment function for testing purpose in VS code rather than use it as the final tool for production deployments. Per second billing and fast spin-up definitely gives Azure Container Instances some advantage over App Service.

"Deploy to ACI" prototype

So I tried to add the ACI integration to the Docker extension. Find source code in my fork. Here is how it looks like.

Assume the image you want to deploy has already been published say dockerhub.Then right click on the image then select Deploy Image to Azure Container Instance.Then select the subscription, resource group.Select the OS type.For now, if you specify ports, it assumes you also want a public IP. You can also hit Enter to skip.Finally give a container group name, then everything is good to go.Get some summary from the output.This also works for Azure Container Registry images.

Next step?

This prototype only helps in creating a container instance. But it's still hard to view the list of created container instances and their status. So for a next step, it would be nice to have tree view of all the container instances and their status. By right clicking on a container instance, there should be an option to tail the logs in the output window. I will update this doc once this part is done.