decolint

📖 Documentation — getting started, every rule, and the full reference.

decolint is a linter for Dev Container configuration files: devcontainer.json, devcontainer-feature.json, and devcontainer-template.json. It reports mistakes, container privileges, and unpinned versions that the Dev Container tooling itself accepts without a word.

Take a devcontainer.json that opens cleanly in VS Code and builds without complaint:

// .devcontainer/devcontainer.json
{
  "name": "api",
  "image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/go:latest",
  "features": {
    "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/docker-in-docker": {}
  },
  "runArgs": ["--privileged"],
  "mounts": [
    "source=/var/run/docker.sock,target=/var/run/docker.sock,type=bind"
  ],
  "forwardPorts": ["db:5432"]
}

$ decolint .
Config: .decolint.jsonc
Linted 1 file:
  .devcontainer/devcontainer.json (devcontainer)

.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:1:1: error: "ALL" is not set via "runArgs", leaving the container with its default Linux capabilities (require-cap-drop-all)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:1:1: error: "no-new-privileges" is not set via "securityOpt" or "runArgs", allowing container processes to gain additional privileges (require-no-new-privileges)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:1:1: error: neither "remoteUser" nor "containerUser" is set, so the container defaults to running as root (require-non-root)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:3:12: error: image "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/go:latest" uses the "latest" tag; pin a specific version (no-image-latest)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:3:12: error: image "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/go:latest" is not pinned by digest; add an "@sha256:..." digest (pin-image-digest)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:5:5: error: feature "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/docker-in-docker" has no explicit version; pin a specific version (pin-feature-version)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:7:15: error: "runArgs" contains "--privileged", disabling the container's isolation from the host (no-privileged-container)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:9:5: error: "mounts" entry bind-mounts the Docker socket, which grants the container root-equivalent control over the host (no-docker-socket-mount)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:11:20: error: "forwardPorts" entry "db:5432" uses "host:port" format; Codespaces only supports a bare port number (no-host-port-format)
Found 9 errors and 0 warnings.

That run has every category and both target platforms enabled; the defaults are quieter. See Set up your project.

Why decolint

• A devcontainer.json is container runtime configuration, and nobody reviews it that way. --privileged and a bind-mounted Docker socket read like ordinary setup lines, and they ship to every teammate and every CI run that rebuilds the container.
• It lints what actually runs, not just what you wrote. Features and the base image contribute configuration of their own, and decolint resolves them the way the real tooling does.
• A silently ignored property is a mistake decolint names. GitHub Codespaces drops bind mounts and rejects host:port entries without reporting anything; the container just comes up wrong.
• It goes where your other linters already are. Findings carry a line and column, and come out as text, JSON, GitHub Actions annotations, or SARIF.
• One static binary. No Node.js, no Docker daemon, no project dependencies.

Lint what actually runs

Your devcontainer.json is only part of the configuration. The Features it references and the base image it names contribute their own, and the tooling merges all of it before the container starts. Take a file that is careful about everything visible in it — pinned by digest, capabilities dropped, no new privileges:

// .devcontainer/devcontainer.json
{
  "name": "api",
  "image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/go:1.24@sha256:8de3d5b3a3ce235671c7649f0b910414158a220d18cbd2714a4446cc0cc6acd3",
  "runArgs": ["--cap-drop=ALL"],
  "securityOpt": ["no-new-privileges"]
}

Nothing in it is wrong. The problems are in what it pulls in:

$ decolint -merge .
Downloading image metadata(mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/go:1.24@sha256:8de3d5b3a3ce235671c7649f0b910414158a220d18cbd2714a4446cc0cc6acd3)
Config: .decolint.jsonc
Linted 1 file:
  .devcontainer/devcontainer.json (devcontainer)

.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:3:3: error: "securityOpt" overrides the default seccomp profile (no-seccomp-override)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:3:3: error: "securityOpt" contains "seccomp=unconfined", disabling the container's syscall filtering (no-seccomp-unconfined)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:3:3: error: extension "golang.Go" has no explicit version; pin a specific version (pin-extension-version)
.devcontainer/devcontainer.json:3:3: error: extension "dbaeumer.vscode-eslint" has no explicit version; pin a specific version (pin-extension-version)
Found 4 errors and 0 warnings.

Not one of those is in the file above. The base image disables seccomp and installs two unpinned VS Code extensions, and that configuration reaches the container whether or not anyone reads it. decolint reports each finding at the property that pulled it in.

Turn it on with -merge, or "merge": true in your config; see Lint what actually runs for what gets resolved and what does not.

Try it

Run it against your own repository, without installing anything:

docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/workspace" ghcr.io/bare-devcontainer/decolint

Install

Download a signed binary from the releases page, or build from source:

GOEXPERIMENT=jsonv2 go install github.com/bare-devcontainer/decolint/cmd/decolint@latest

GOEXPERIMENT=jsonv2 is required because decolint uses the still experimental encoding/json/v2 standard library package. The container image is published for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64. See Getting started for the image tags available and how to verify a release artifact.

What it checks

Every rule belongs to one category, which sets its severity. Only correctness runs without configuration; the rest are off until you enable them:

Category	Default	Rules
correctness	error	13
security	off	8
reproducibility	off	4
style	off	2

Documentation

• Getting started — install decolint, turn on the checks you want, name the platforms you target, lint the configuration your Features and base image actually produce, and wire it into CI as annotations or SARIF.
• Rules — every rule, with why it exists, the configuration it accepts and rejects, and the part of the Dev Container specification it comes from.
• Reference — every flag, config file member, output format, and exit code.

Contributing

Rules are plain Go code and new ones are easy to add; see CONTRIBUTING.md for the development workflow and a walkthrough of adding a rule.

License

MIT