External terminal support for dev containers

[AaronFriel]

Copying this issue here:

• [Dev Containers] Feature Request: Local Terminal with Remote VS Code microsoft/vscode-remote-release#9739

I love dev containers as an idea, but I do not love that I cannot easily use my "local terminal" environment in implementations and it makes using tools that use some form of identity - including git! - more challenging than necessary.

Whether by moving to an external-by-default terminal, or enabling users to easily launch a terminal external to the container would be fantastic.

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By far the biggest obstacle for me to adopt Dev Containers in my organization and daily driving use is that I lose access to my local, familiar terminal environment while in the container. Muscle memory and tools I'm familiar with disappear.

As a power user, my ideal workflow would be that when I open a dev container, it behaves exactly as it does today, except that I can easily open a terminal outside of the container and there is an alias or command injected to easily execute shell commands inside the container.

That is, I would like to be able to do something like this:

$ $devcommand cargo build | rg 
# ^                         ^ 
# |                         \ the userland outside the container is the default
# \ runs 'docker exec -it ...' inside the ambient container

Or this:

$ gh pr checkout 100

That is, the dev container preserves my intuition and learned skills of using my shell, while keeping the current behavior of enhancing the IDE experience with extensions that run using blessed versions of packages.

This is also marginally more secure as I can run a less-trusted, an OSS repository's dev container, using VS Code and not need to configure any my local applications that rely on local credentials or environment variables to work inside of the container. I would not even be tempted to do so.