u/Albertooz

This article walks through installing Visual Studio Code, pulling the AL Language VSIX directly from your bcserver container, and scaffolding your first AL project. The key takeaway is why you should grab the VSIX from your container instead of the Marketplace it ensures your AL compiler matches your BC platform version.

Part 1 is here: https://albertassaad.medium.com/setting-up-a-microsoft-dynamics-365-business-central-sandbox-container-on-windows-for-local-778b7319c3b6

Part 2: https://albertassaad.medium.com/setting-up-visual-studio-code-and-creating-your-first-al-project-for-business-central-c6c12482d3f0

Hi all,

I kept redoing the same Business Central local setup every time I switched machines, so I finally wrote the whole process down in one article.

It covers:

Prerequisites (Windows edition, RAM, disk, PowerShell)

Docker Desktop install and switching to Windows containers

Enabling Hyper-V and the Containers Windows features

Installing BcContainerHelper

The full New-BcContainer command, with each parameter explained (containerName, auth, artifactUrl, isolation, memoryLimit, useSSL, updateHosts, etc.)

A workaround for slow or limited internet — pulling the W1 and platform artifact URLs from PowerShell, downloading the zips with a download manager, and dropping them into C:\bcartifacts.cache\sandbox\<version>\w1\ and \platform\ so BcContainerHelper skips the download

Accessing BC in the browser and the container commands I use the most

Next article in the series will cover VS Code, the AL Language extension, and publishing an extension to the container.

Link: https://medium.com/@albertassaad/setting-up-a-microsoft-dynamics-365-business-central-sandbox-container-on-windows-for-local-778b7319c3b6

Happy to hear corrections or any tips you use in your own setup.