Embedded System have a lifetime of 10 or 15 years. During that time the software and tools has to be maintained. This can be very challenging. Who knows if that compiler or tool used is still available in 10 years from now? Additionally installing and configuring the tool chain and environment for a new team member is difficult. Even worse: using a different host operating system for the cross development can produce different results or introduce issues.

One solution for all these problems is to use Docker images and containers. I can pack all the necessary tools and software into a virtual environment and container. But developing inside a container comes with many challenges. In this article I’ll show how Visual Studio Code or VS Code makes working with containers very easy. In this article I show how easy it is to use modern development tools and methodologies for embedded development.