I use to have my Makefile call out and do `docker build ...` and `docker run ...` etc with a volume mount of the source code to manage and maintain tooling versions etc.

It works okay, better than a lot of other workflows I have seen. But it is a bit slow, a bit cumbersome(for langs like Go or Node.js that want to write to HOME) and I had some issues on my ARM Macbook about no ARM images etc.

I would recommend taking a look at Nix, it is what I switched to.

* It is faster. * Has access to more tools. * Works on ARM, X86 etc.