Containerized development environment for one-click onboarding experience

[mjyc]

Hello, a big fan of Mushr project[^1] here.

While the Mushr project's development environment (devenv) setup process is well-documented, I thought the onboarding experience could be improved by adopting a container-based devenv to provide no/low-install experience to new developers[^2]. I've been enjoying GitHub Codespaces (which leverages Development Container)[^3] and recently found an example of using Codespace with a ROS 2 project (Nav2). I thought Mushr could benefit from providing a devcontainer setup so that a developer could work on a Mushr project in browser (or on laptop or robot) instantly, i.e., without following installation instructions.

Here are proposed steps and their status:

1. Set up a devcontainer
   • 2023/06/04: Opened Add devcontainer configuration files #109, ready for review
2. Make foxglove usable in Codespaces, i.e., support visualization
   • 2023/06/07: Opened Update devcontainer config to support Foxglove Studio on Codespace #110 (see demo video), ready for review
3. Test this containerized devenv with a robot--if makes sense

I'd love to hear the Mushr community's feedback! For example, anyone interested in trying out? what works well/not well? any must have features? etc. Looking forward to hearing from you,

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[^1] More generally, a big DIY robot project enthusiast.
[^2] Similar to how Code Sandbox provides noinstall experience for new frontend developers. I also said low-install experience because for local development, a new developer still need to install docker, VSCode, Dev Container extension, etc.. Btw, ROSJects from TheContstruct tried something similar for roboticists in the past.
[^3] Learn more about how devcontainer & Codespaces can streamline robotics project setup here.

[mjyc]

Hey @schmittlema @cmavrogiannis @tapomayukh, how are things? Hope you are well,

I've been working on robo-DX related projects and proposed above to improve onboarding experience of Mushr. Check out this latest demo video, I believe the PRs as-is now could already be helpful to new Mushr users (ugrad capstone students?) and would love to hear your feedback

[schmittlema]

Hey Mike!
This is pretty neat and at a high level seems like a good contribution to the project! We will take a look at the specific code details in the coming days and let you know of any questions we have. Thanks for sharing!