Summary

This proposal addresses Issue #671 - making it easier to reuse local Features in dev containers.

Problem

Users who want to manage a collection of their own dev container configurations and Features in a single repository face significant friction. The current specification requires local Features to be stored within the .devcontainer/ folder at the project workspace folder root, which makes reusing Features across different dev container configurations difficult.

Solution

This PR introduces a new localFeaturesRoot property for devcontainer.json that allows users to specify a custom base directory for resolving local Feature paths.

Property Definition

Example Usage

{
    "name": "My Project",
    "image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/base:ubuntu",
    "localFeaturesRoot": "../../shared-features",
    "features": {
        "./my-feature": {}  // Resolves to shared-features/my-feature
    }
}

Changes Made

1. proposals/flexible-local-feature-paths.md - New proposal document with full specification
2. docs/specs/devcontainerjson-reference.md - Added localFeaturesRoot property to the reference
3. docs/specs/devcontainer-features-distribution.md - Updated "Locally referenced Features" section with new property documentation and examples
4. schemas/devContainer.base.schema.json - Added localFeaturesRoot property to the JSON schema

Backward Compatibility

This change is fully backward compatible:

• The localFeaturesRoot property is optional
• When not specified, behavior is identical to current spec
• Existing configurations continue to work without modification

Implementation Notes

This is a specification-only proposal. The actual implementation would need to be done in the devcontainers/cli repository.

Fixes #671