> This makes some IO heavy tasks (pip install, npm install) painfully slow.

Aside/HTH: The new Yarn has "Plug 'n Play"[1]. They claim that committing [their version of] node_modules is a reasonable thing to do, so that's one way to avoid install entirely. I don't trust that claim, yet (it smells like noisy diffs). You can instead re-enable the global cache[2], and then mirror your host cache directory into your container (whatever `yarn cache dir` gives you).

I have tried none of this myself because I'm not working on anything JS right now. pnpm[3] is what I've been using up til now, and is also a direct upgrade in terms of speed (but I suspect it won't work with mounting host directories).

[1]: https://classic.yarnpkg.com/en/docs/pnp/ [2]: https://yarnpkg.com/features/offline-cache#sharing-the-cache [3]: https://pnpm.io/

Very true. It really depends on what the workflow is. But once you’ve already moved to a disconnected dev environment, moving from a container to remote server is a small step.