The Dockerfile is the basis of the devcontainer and can be changed to add or remove tools. It will take a long time to build locally, so by default the devcontainer will pull a prebuilt version. Edit `.devcontainer/devcontainer.json` if you would rather build your own.
Several useful VSCode extentsions will be installed, including a Z80 assembly language server, Z80 and C debugger, Makefile support, BASIC syntax highlighter and more.
Thanks to the many authors of these wonderful tools and extensions; to think what we could have made with these in 1985!
Open a terminal and navigate to the directory which will contain your Spectrum projects. Run `git clone https://github.com/mcphail/speccydev.git your_project_name` and enter that directory. Start vscode by running `code .` inside the directory.
If you have installed the Dev Containers extension correctly, a popup will offer to reload the project within a devcontainer. Go ahead and allow this. The first time you use this devcontainer, it may take a few minutes to download and start. It should open more quickly on subsequent use.
Open the bottom bar in vscode to expose the terminal or select "Terminal -> New Terminal" from the menu bar. Try running some Linux commands like `ls -lh` or `date`. Build the example project by running `make` from the terminal or the VSCode extension. Experiment with editing some of the source files and running `make` again. Experiment with some of the assemblers, compilers and other tools mentioned above. The `Makefile` contains example usage of tools like sjasmplus, zmakebas, Boriel's BASIC and the FUSE utilities.
Debug in the built in simulator or in CSpect externally (example CSpect invocation on Windows would be `CSpect.exe -w2 -debug -remote`). The simulator is set up to expect a binary called `myprog.sna` and a map file called `myprog.sld` but this can be configured in the `.vscode/launch.json` file.
*Note: to use CSpect debugging from a Linux host you will have to edit the file `.vscode/launch.json` to change the `"hostname"` parameter to `"localhost"`*
