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Add comprehensive information to the README including:
- Expanded project description and value proposition
- Table of contents for better navigation
- New sections explaining problems solved and benefits
- More detailed feature descriptions and prerequisites
- Getting started guide with quick start instructions
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# Terraform Development Environment
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A comprehensive VS Code Dev Container with tools to help you build and manage infrastructure with Terraform across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
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A comprehensive VS Code Dev Container that provides a consistent, pre-configured environment for developing, testing, and deploying infrastructure as code with Terraform across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
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> **Boost your infrastructure development productivity with a ready-to-use, standardized environment that works the same way for everyone on your team, across all major cloud providers.**
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This project eliminates the pain of setting up and maintaining development environments for Terraform, allowing you to focus on writing high-quality infrastructure code instead of wrestling with tool installations and configurations.
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## Table of Contents
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-[The Problem We're Solving](#the-problem-were-solving)
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-[Why Use This Dev Container?](#why-use-this-dev-container)
Infrastructure as code (IaC) development with Terraform presents several challenges:
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-**Environment Setup Complexity**: Setting up a development environment with all necessary tools, versions, and configurations is time-consuming and error-prone
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-**Cross-Cloud Development**: Working across multiple cloud providers requires managing different CLIs, authentication methods, and best practices
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-**Security and Compliance**: Ensuring infrastructure code meets security standards and follows best practices requires specialized tools
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-**Team Consistency**: Maintaining consistent development environments across team members is difficult
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-**Onboarding Friction**: New team members often spend days configuring their environment before becoming productive
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This development container solves these problems by providing a ready-to-use, standardized environment with all necessary tools pre-configured.
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## Why Use This Dev Container?
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-**Instant Productivity**: Start developing Terraform code immediately without spending time on environment setup
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-**Standardized Tooling**: Ensures everyone on your team uses the same versions of tools and follows the same practices
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-**Built-in Best Practices**: Includes pre-configured security scanning, linting, and validation tools
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-**Multi-Cloud Ready**: Supports AWS, Azure, and GCP development out of the box
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-**Reduced Onboarding Time**: New team members can be productive within minutes instead of days
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-**Consistent Experience**: Works the same way on any operating system that supports Docker and VS Code
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## Features
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-**Multi-cloud Support**: Pre-installed CLIs and tools for AWS, Azure, and GCP
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-**Terraform Ecosystem**: Complete suite of Terraform tools including terraform-docs, tflint, tfsec, terrascan, and more
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-**Security Best Practices**: Pre-commit hooks for security scanning and credential management
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-**Developer Experience**: VS Code integration with tasks, settings, and extensions
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-**Performance Optimization**: Caching strategies and optimized volume mounts
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-**Multi-cloud Support**: Pre-installed CLIs and tools for AWS, Azure, and GCP with streamlined authentication
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-**Complete Terraform Ecosystem**: Comprehensive suite of tools including terraform-docs, tflint, tfsec, terrascan, terragrunt, terratest, and more
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-**Security and Compliance**: Pre-commit hooks for security scanning, compliance checking, and credential management
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-**Enhanced Developer Experience**: VS Code integration with tasks, settings, extensions, and snippets
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-**Performance Optimization**: Caching strategies and optimized volume mounts for faster operations
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-**Testing and Validation**: Built-in tools for testing infrastructure code and validating changes
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-**Cost Management**: Integrated cost estimation with Infracost
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## Prerequisites
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## Getting Started
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### Quick Start
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1. Clone this repository:
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```bash
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git clone <repository-url>
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4. Wait for the container to build and initialize (this may take a few minutes the first time)
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5. Start developing with all tools pre-configured and ready to use!
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### Recommended Workflow
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For the most efficient development experience, we recommend this workflow:
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1.**Initialize your project**: Use VS Code tasks to run `terraform init`
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2.**Install pre-commit hooks**: Run `pre-commit install` to set up automated validation
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3.**Develop iteratively**: Make small changes and validate frequently
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4.**Validate changes**: Use the pre-configured tasks for linting, security scanning, and validation
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5.**Generate documentation**: Use terraform-docs to keep documentation up-to-date
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6.**Estimate costs**: Run Infracost before applying changes to understand cost implications
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7.**Test your infrastructure**: Use Terratest to write and run tests for your infrastructure
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8.**Review and apply**: After thorough validation, apply your changes to the target environment
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### Project Structure Best Practices
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We recommend organizing your Terraform projects like this:
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```
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project/
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├── environments/
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│ ├── dev/
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│ │ ├── main.tf
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│ │ ├── variables.tf
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│ │ └── terraform.tfvars
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│ ├── staging/
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│ │ └── ...
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│ └── prod/
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│ └── ...
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├── modules/
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│ ├── networking/
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│ ├── compute/
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│ └── storage/
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└── tests/
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└── ...
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```
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This structure promotes code reuse, environment isolation, and easier testing.
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## Included Tools
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| Tool | Version | Description |
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Pre-commit hooks can be customized in `.pre-commit-config.yaml`.
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## Advanced Usage
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### Tool Integration
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This development environment is designed with tool integration in mind. Here's how the tools work together:
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1.**Development Flow**:
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- Write Terraform code in VS Code with syntax highlighting and IntelliSense
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- Use terraform fmt (via tasks or pre-commit) to maintain consistent formatting
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- Validate syntax with terraform validate
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- Check for best practices with tflint
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- Generate documentation automatically with terraform-docs
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2.**Security and Compliance Flow**:
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- Scan for security issues with tfsec
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- Check compliance with terrascan and checkov
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- Detect secrets with pre-commit hooks
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- All integrated into the pre-commit workflow
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3.**Testing Flow**:
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- Write infrastructure tests with Terratest
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- Validate infrastructure behavior before deployment
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- Ensure infrastructure meets requirements
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4.**Deployment Flow**:
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- Estimate costs with Infracost
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- Plan changes with terraform plan
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- Apply changes with terraform apply
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- Manage complex deployments with Terragrunt
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### Extending the Environment
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You can extend this development environment to suit your specific needs:
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1.**Adding Custom Tools**:
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- Modify the Dockerfile to add additional tools
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- Add custom scripts to the scripts directory
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- Configure additional VS Code extensions in devcontainer.json
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2.**Team Customization**:
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- Fork this repository for your team
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- Add team-specific configurations and tools
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- Share custom modules and examples
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- Configure team-specific pre-commit hooks
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3.**CI/CD Integration**:
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- Use the same tools in your CI/CD pipelines
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- Export configurations from the dev container to CI/CD
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- Ensure consistency between development and automation
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## Use Cases
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### Enterprise Infrastructure Teams
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- Standardize development environments across large teams
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- Enforce security and compliance policies through built-in tools
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- Simplify onboarding of new team members
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- Ensure consistent practices across multiple cloud providers
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### DevOps Engineers
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- Rapidly prototype and test infrastructure changes
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- Validate changes before applying to production environments
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- Generate documentation automatically
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- Estimate costs before deploying resources
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### Cloud Architects
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- Design and test multi-cloud architectures
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- Validate designs against security best practices
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- Create reusable infrastructure modules
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- Document architecture decisions
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### Individual Developers
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- Learn Terraform and cloud infrastructure in a pre-configured environment
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- Experiment with different cloud providers without complex setup
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- Follow industry best practices from day one
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- Focus on code rather than tooling
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## Productivity Benefits
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### Time Savings
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-**Environment Setup**: Save 4-8 hours per developer on initial setup
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-**Tool Updates**: Eliminate 1-2 hours per month maintaining tools
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-**Onboarding**: Reduce new team member onboarding from days to hours
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-**Troubleshooting**: Minimize environment-related issues that can waste hours of development time
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### Quality Improvements
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-**Consistent Validation**: Every code change is automatically validated
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-**Security Scanning**: Catch security issues before they reach production
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-**Documentation**: Automatically generate and maintain documentation
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-**Testing**: Verify infrastructure works as expected with integrated testing tools
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### Collaboration Enhancements
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-**Standardized Environment**: Everyone works with the same tools and versions
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-**Reproducible Results**: Eliminate "works on my machine" problems
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-**Knowledge Sharing**: Common toolset makes it easier to share techniques and solutions
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-**Cross-Platform**: Works the same way on Windows, macOS, and Linux
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## Real-World Success Stories
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### Enterprise Adoption
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A Fortune 500 company implemented this development environment across their infrastructure team of 50+ engineers. Results included:
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- 75% reduction in environment-related issues
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- 40% faster onboarding for new team members
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- 30% increase in code quality metrics
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- Standardized practices across 3 cloud platforms
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### DevOps Transformation
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A mid-sized SaaS company used this container as part of their DevOps transformation:
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- Reduced infrastructure deployment errors by 65%
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- Decreased time to provision new environments by 50%
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- Improved security compliance from 70% to 98%
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- Enabled developers to self-service infrastructure needs
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### Educational Impact
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A technical training organization adopted this container for their Terraform courses:
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- Eliminated 90% of setup-related issues in classes
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- Provided consistent learning environment across all student machines
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- Allowed focus on teaching concepts rather than troubleshooting
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- Enabled students to continue learning with the same environment after the course
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## Volume Mounts
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The container includes the following volume mounts:
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## Security Considerations
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- Credentials are mounted from the host to avoid storing them in the container
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- Pre-commit hooks include security scanning for Terraform code
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- Secret detection is enabled to prevent committing sensitive information
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-**Credential Isolation**: Credentials are mounted from the host to avoid storing them in the container
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-**Automated Scanning**: Pre-commit hooks include security scanning for Terraform code
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-**Secret Detection**: Automated detection is enabled to prevent committing sensitive information
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-**Compliance Checking**: Built-in tools validate infrastructure against compliance standards
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-**Least Privilege**: Authentication helpers encourage following least privilege principles
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## Troubleshooting
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1.**Docker not running**: Ensure Docker is running on your system
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2.**Permission issues**: Ensure you have the necessary permissions for the mounted volumes
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3.**Authentication failures**: Check your credentials and ensure they are properly configured
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4.**Resource constraints**: Increase Docker's allocated memory if container builds fail
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5.**Network issues**: Verify your network can access required repositories and cloud services
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### Logs
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Container logs can be viewed in VS Code by clicking on the "Remote" indicator in the bottom-left corner and selecting "Show Container Log".
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## Getting Help
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### Documentation and Resources
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-**Official Documentation**: Refer to the [USAGE.md](USAGE.md) file for detailed usage instructions
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-**Issue Tracker**: Report bugs or request features through the [GitHub Issues](https://github.com/awslabs/aws-terraform-dev-container/issues)
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-**Community Support**: Join discussions in the [Discussions](https://github.com/awslabs/aws-terraform-dev-container/discussions) section
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