Explore using Positron Dev Container

[hturner]

Positron now have experimental support for Dev Containers: https://positron.posit.co/dev-containers.html.

Can we use this feature to run the R Dev Container locally in Positron?

[jamestripp]

Thank you for raising this @hturner . It will be exciting to have this running under positron!

When opening the devcontainer on Positron 2026.07.1 build 5 with Docker engine 24.0.6 I get the below message.

The devcontainer is started within Docker which suggests this error occurs when positron is trying to connect to the positron server within the container. I'm thinking either (a) the server installation fails or (b) there is some sort of issue connecting to the web server.

On VSCode I can open the devcontainer without issue.

It might make sense to raise this directly with the positron team to drill into this a bit deeper. Also, I wonder if #302 will either help with issue or provide an alternative of connecting to the container as an remote ssh location (https://positron.posit.co/remote-ssh.html).