Creating a Dev Container for TypeScript and VS Code — Part 2

Full-time Node.js dev container for less installation effort and more consistency.

Building on what we created in part 1, in this article we’ll cover:

• Initializing the Node.js project with npm
• “Hello, world!” console app in TypeScript
• “Hello, world!” web app in TypeScript
• Being specific about versioning
• Keeping dependencies up to date

Introduction

At the end of part 1, we have a dev container with Node.js and npm installed. We also have a suitable set of VS Code extensions for TypeScript development.

In part 2 we will complete the creation of the dev container by initializing the npm package and by installing the TypeScript compiler. We will also investigate a simple way to run a console application and a web site. We will conclude the article with some thoughts about managing dependencies.

The complete source code for this article is available on github.

Italics: As in the previous part, all is designed to run on Linux, MacOS and Windows without code changes. However, I will use italics to describe differences that are operating system specific where necessary.

Pre-Requisites

For this article you need the following prerequisites:

• VS Code
• VS Code extension “Remote Development”
• Git CLI (https://git-scm.com/downloads)

Linux only: You also need docker engine for Linux.

MacOS only: You also need Docker Desktop for MacOS.

Windows only: You also need

• WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Windows 2)
• A Linux distribution (“distro”) such as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
• Docker Desktop for Windows (install this one last)

Initializing the NPM Package

By convention when you start a Node.js code base, you initialize the containing directory with the following command: