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Add remoteUser to .devcontainer to fix JetBrains IDE support (#728) - #729

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bedrich-schindler merged 1 commit into
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task/728
Aug 25, 2026
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Add remoteUser to .devcontainer to fix JetBrains IDE support (#728)#729
bedrich-schindler merged 1 commit into
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task/728

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Opening the project in WebStorm using the Dev Containers "Clone" mode failed during the IDE remote agent bootstrap with:

chgrp: invalid group: '1000:1000'

The chgrp call is issued by the JetBrains dev-container helper while it fixes the ownership of its remote agent files. With no user declared in devcontainer.json, WebStorm falls back to the Compose user: directive (${COMPOSE_UID}:${COMPOSE_GID}) and passes the literal 1000:1000 string to chgrp, which accepts only a group, never a uid:gid pair.

Declaring "remoteUser": "developer" makes WebStorm resolve the user via /etc/passwd inside the container instead. This is safe on all platforms: fixuid rewrites the developer entry at container start to match the uid:gid the container runs as, and devcontainer.json is not read outside the dev-container workflow (plain docker compose up, terminals, CI), so nothing else is affected.

Comment thread .devcontainer/devcontainer.json
Opening the project in WebStorm using the Dev Containers "Clone" mode
failed during the IDE remote agent bootstrap with:

chgrp: invalid group: '1000:1000'

The `chgrp` call is issued by the JetBrains dev-container helper while it
fixes the ownership of its remote agent files. With no user declared in
`devcontainer.json`, WebStorm falls back to the Compose `user:` directive
(`${COMPOSE_UID}:${COMPOSE_GID}`) and passes the literal `1000:1000`
string to `chgrp`, which accepts only a group, never a `uid:gid` pair.

Declaring `"remoteUser": "developer"` makes WebStorm resolve the user via
`/etc/passwd` inside the container instead. This is safe on all
platforms: `fixuid` rewrites the `developer` entry at container start to
match the uid:gid the container runs as, and `devcontainer.json` is not
read outside the dev-container workflow (plain `docker compose up`,
terminals, CI), so nothing else is affected.
@bedrich-schindler
bedrich-schindler merged commit 5f16b9e into master Aug 25, 2026
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@bedrich-schindler
bedrich-schindler deleted the task/728 branch August 25, 2026 07:07
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JetBrains IDE fails to start Development Containers in Clone mode

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