How to change default volume mount in VS Code Remote Container?

Question

How to change the default volume mount for the folder opened in the container? I have tried in my Dockerfile:

RUN mkdir /root/myproject
WORKDIR /root/myproject

As well as my .devcontainer.json:

{
    "name": "My Project",
    "dockerFile": "Dockerfile",
    "workspaceFolder": "/root/myproject",
}

But the folder is still being mounted on /workspaces/myproject within the container.

Answer 1

Update

The upcoming vscode-container release should support using workspaceFolder as you show. See this issue for details.

---

If you are using an older version of the remote extensions, it is not possible to do this when using a single dockerfile, but you can do this using the workspaceFolder setting for a docker-compose dev container:

.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:

{
    "name": "My Project",
    "dockerComposeFile": "docker-compose.yml",
    "service": "my-service-name",
    "workspaceFolder": "/customPath"
}

.devcontainer/docker-compose.yml:

version: '3'
services:
  my-service-name:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    volumes:
      - ..:/customPath
    command: sleep infinity

You can change customPath to whatever path you would like the workspace to be mounted to. Also, make sure to add the command: sleep infinity for containers would automatically shutdown when started