shells inside devcontainers do not have remoteEnv environment variables set

[gilesknap]

Reproduction steps

1. Launch zed and open a project with the following snippet in it's devcontainer.json

    "remoteEnv": {
        // Allow X11 apps to run inside the container
        "DISPLAY": "${localEnv:DISPLAY}",
        // Put things that allow it in the persistent cache
        "PRE_COMMIT_HOME": "/cache/pre-commit",
        "UV_CACHE_DIR": "/cache/uv",
        "UV_PYTHON_CACHE_DIR": "/cache/uv-python",
        // Make a venv that is specific for this workspace path as the cache is shared
        "UV_PROJECT_ENVIRONMENT": "/cache/venv-for${localWorkspaceFolder}",
        // Do the equivalent of "activate" the venv so we don't have to "uv run" everything
        "VIRTUAL_ENV": "/cache/venv-for${localWorkspaceFolder}",
        "PATH": "/cache/venv-for${localWorkspaceFolder}/bin:${containerEnv:PATH}"
    },

2. project: open remote --> connect to devcontainer --> default
3. launch a terminal
4. env | grep UV_
5. result is no match
6. for an example that exhibits this issue see https://github.com/gilesknap/2ndBrain

Current vs. Expected behavior

Current: no environment variables from the remoteEnv configuration are available inside the devcontainer
Expected: all the env vars should be available

I believe the problem is that the zed server is being started with docker (or podman) exec, at least that is what it looks like here:

zed/crates/remote/src/transport/docker.rs

Lines 633 to 667 in 99a558f

	let mut docker_args = vec!["exec".to_string()];
	for env_var in ["RUST_LOG", "RUST_BACKTRACE", "ZED_GENERATE_MINIDUMPS"] {
	if let Some(value) = std::env::var(env_var).ok() {
	docker_args.push("-e".to_string());
	docker_args.push(format!("{}='{}'", env_var, value));
	}
	}
	docker_args.extend([
	"-u".to_string(),
	self.connection_options.remote_user.to_string(),
	"-w".to_string(),
	self.remote_dir_for_server.clone(),
	"-i".to_string(),
	self.connection_options.container_id.to_string(),
	]);
	let val = remote_binary_relpath
	.display(self.path_style())
	.into_owned();
	docker_args.push(val);
	docker_args.push("proxy".to_string());
	docker_args.push("--identifier".to_string());
	docker_args.push(unique_identifier);
	if reconnect {
	docker_args.push("--reconnect".to_string());
	}
	let mut command = util::command::new_command(self.docker_cli());
	command
	.kill_on_drop(true)
	.stdin(Stdio::piped())
	.stdout(Stdio::piped())
	.stderr(Stdio::piped())
	.args(docker_args);

I can reproduce this issue with the devcontainer CLI and no zed as follows:

devcontainer up --docker-path podman
podman exec container_name bash
env | grep UV_ # no matches

Whereas using the devcontainer cli to launch a shell in the container gets the correct environment:

devcontainer up --docker-path podman
devcontainer exec --docker-path podman bash
env | grep UV_ # matches!!

Zed version and system specs

Zed: v0.223.3+stable.152.59dfdea1697030fd39de6c92172ff192d013a984 (Zed)
OS: Linux Wayland ubuntu 25.10
Memory: 30.3 GiB
Architecture: x86_64
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 || NVIDIA || 590.48.01

Attach Zed log file

2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [zed] ========== starting zed version 0.223.3+stable.152.59dfdea1697030fd39de6c92172ff192d013a984, sha 59dfdea ==========
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [crashes] spawning crash handler process
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [extension_host] extensions updated. loading 4, reloading 0, unloading 0
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [gpui::platform::linux::platform] activate is not implemented on Linux, ignoring the call
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [auto_update] Auto Update: checking for updates
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 WARN [project::agent_server_store] Registry agent 'github-copilot' not found in ACP registry
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [workspace::persistence] Got 1 breakpoints from database at path: /home/giles/code/2ndBrain/src/brain/agents/router.py
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [workspace::persistence] Got 1 breakpoints from database at path: /home/giles/code/2ndBrain/tests/test_cli.py
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [workspace::persistence] Got 1 breakpoints from database at path: /home/giles/code/2ndBrain/tests/test_migrate.py
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [client] set status on client 0: Authenticating
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [gpui::platform::blade::blade_renderer] Initializing Blade pipelines for surface SurfaceInfo { format: Bgra8Unorm, alpha: PreMultiplied }
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [workspace] Rendered first frame
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [crashes] connected to crash handler process after 100ms
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [crashes] crash handler registered
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [util] set environment variables from shell:/usr/bin/zsh, path:/home/giles/bin:/home/giles/.local/bin:/home/giles/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin:/snap/bin
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [zed::zed] Using GPU: GpuSpecs { is_software_emulated: false, device_name: "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090", driver_name: "NVIDIA", driver_info: "590.48.01" }
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 WARN [language] unrecognized capture name 'function_name' in Python injections TreeSitter query (suppress this warning by prefixing with '')
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 WARN [language] unrecognized capture name 'comment' in Python injections TreeSitter query (suppress this warning by prefixing with '')
2026-02-14T22:46:01+00:00 INFO [node_runtime] Node runtime install_if_needed
2026-02-14T22:46:02+00:00 WARN [node_runtime] using Zed managed Node.js at /home/giles/.local/share/zed/node/node-v24.11.0-linux-x64 since checking system Node.js failed with error: node at /usr/bin/node is too old. want: 22.0.0, got: 20.19.4
2026-02-14T22:46:02+00:00 INFO [client] set status on client 633681: Authenticated
2026-02-14T22:46:02+00:00 INFO [lsp] starting language server process. binary path: "/home/giles/.local/share/zed/node/node-v24.11.0-linux-x64/bin/node", working directory: "/home/giles/code/2ndBrain", args: ["/home/giles/.local/share/zed/languages/json-language-server/node_modules/vscode-langservers-extracted/bin/vscode-json-language-server", "--stdio"]
2026-02-14T22:46:02+00:00 INFO [lsp] starting language server process. binary path: "/home/giles/.local/share/zed/node/node-v24.11.0-linux-x64/bin/node", working directory: "/home/giles/code/2ndBrain", args: ["/home/giles/.local/share/zed/languages/basedpyright/node_modules/basedpyright/langserver.index.js", "--stdio"]
2026-02-14T22:46:03+00:00 INFO [lsp] starting language server process. binary path: "/home/giles/.local/share/zed/languages/ruff/ruff-0.15.1/ruff-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/ruff", working directory: "/home/giles/code/2ndBrain", args: ["server"]
2026-02-14T22:46:03+00:00 INFO [project::lsp_store] language server 1: unregistered workspace/DidChangeWatchedFiles capability with id 16b...2636
2026-02-14T22:46:04+00:00 INFO [recent_projects::remote_servers] SSH: Watching User Config at: "/home/giles/.ssh/config"
2026-02-14T22:46:04+00:00 INFO [recent_projects::remote_servers] SSH: Watching Global Config at: "/etc/ssh/ssh_config"
2026-02-14T22:46:07+00:00 INFO [dev_container::devcontainer_api] find_devcontainer_configs: Found 1 configurations
2026-02-14T22:46:08+00:00 INFO [dev_container::devcontainer_api] Found devcontainer cli on $PATH, using it
2026-02-14T22:46:08+00:00 INFO [dev_container::devcontainer_api] Running full devcontainer up command: "devcontainer" "--docker-path" "podman" "up" "--workspace-folder" "/home/giles/code/2ndBrain" "--config" "/home/giles/code/2ndBrain/.devcontainer/devcontainer.json"
2026-02-14T22:46:11+00:00 INFO [remote::transport::docker] Remote platform discovered: Some(RemotePlatform { os: Linux, arch: X86_64 })
2026-02-14T22:46:11+00:00 INFO [remote::transport::docker] $SHELL is not set, checking passwd for user
2026-02-14T22:46:11+00:00 INFO [remote::transport::docker] Remote shell discovered: /bin/bash
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [remote_server] (remote server) starting up with PID 112:
pid_file: "/root/.local/share/zed/server_state/workspace-25/server.pid", log_file: "/root/.local/share/zed/logs/server-workspace-25.log", stdin_socket: "/root/.local/share/zed/server_state/workspace-25/stdin.sock", stdout_socket: "/root/.local/share/zed/server_state/workspace-25/stdout.sock", stderr_socket: "/root/.local/share/zed/server_state/workspace-25/stderr.sock"
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [crashes] (remote server) spawning crash handler process
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [util] (remote server) updating SHELL environment variable to value from passwd entry: "/bin/bash"
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [remote_server] (remote server) gpui app started, initializing server
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [util] (remote server) set environment variables from shell:/bin/bash, path:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [remote_server] (remote server) accepting new connections
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [remote_server] (remote server) accepted new connections
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [zed::zed] Using GPU: GpuSpecs { is_software_emulated: false, device_name: "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090", driver_name: "NVIDIA", driver_info: "590.48.01" }
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [remote_server] (remote server) Got new node settings: NodeBinarySettings { path: None, npm_path: None, ignore_system_version: false }
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [project::lsp_store] stopping language server json-language-server
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [project::lsp_store] stopping language server basedpyright
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [project::lsp_store] stopping language server ruff
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 WARN [project.json-schema] Schema request failed: LSP store has been dropped
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 ERROR [lsp] Server reset connection for a request "textDocument/diagnostic" id 11
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 WARN [project::lsp_store] Get diagnostics via json-language-server failed: Server reset the connection
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 ERROR [crates/project/src/lsp_store.rs:4364] pulling diagnostics

Caused by:
Get diagnostics via json-language-server failed: Server reset the connection
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [crashes] (remote server) connected to crash handler process after 100ms
2026-02-14T22:46:12+00:00 INFO [crashes] (remote server) crash handler registered
2026-02-14T22:46:13+00:00 INFO [extension_host::headless_host] (remote server) failed to load extension: html, No extension manifest found for extension html
2026-02-14T22:46:13+00:00 INFO [extension_host] Uploading extension html to RemotePathBuf { style: Posix, string: "/root/.local/share/zed/remote_extensions/uploads/html" }
2026-02-14T22:46:13+00:00 INFO [extension_host] Finished uploading extension html
2026-02-14T22:46:13+00:00 INFO [extension_host::headless_host] (remote server) Loaded language server: vscode-html-language-server

Relevant Zed settings

settings are almost entirely default except

use_podman: true

Relevant Keymap

keymap.json

(for AI issues) Model provider details

No response

If you are using WSL on Windows, what flavor of Linux are you using?

None