Vagrant - development environments made easy

[melodie]

Hi,
I heard about it yesterday on IRC, here are a few links to it, before I forget to pass on the message:
http://wiki.greptilian.com/vagrant/#index1h2

Using virtual machines running locally on your workstation, Vagrant lets you define the environment your application will run in and quickly iterate on both your application and its environment.

http://www.vagrantup.com

Create and configure lightweight, reproducible, and portable development environments.

http://www.vagrantbox.es
Available boxes:

Vagrant is an amazing tool for managing virtual machines via a simple to use command line interface. With a simple vagrant up you can be working in a clean environment based on a standard template.

These standard templates are called base boxes, and this website is simply a list of boxes people have been nice enough to make publicly available.

I realized it is available at Ubuntu in the repositories, so it is also probably available at Debian. For Archlinux, there is only a pkgbuild, and the package created triggers numerous errors and warnings when namcap is invoked to check the package. (I put a comment at the related aur page and pointed to the list of errors there).

After a little reading through these websites, I think this tool could be interesting to try, be it for dev or for playing with current vbox machines.

[Taco.22]

I can confirm that Vagrant is in the Debian Wheezy/Testing repo - don't know about others.

[konaexpress]

Not sure I get what it is for, I know how to make a VBox image.

[djohnston]

It's a way to quickly install a complete OS from a template file. See here and here.

[pdurbin]

I think what Vagrant users really appreciate is a URL for a base box they'd like to try.

They simply make a Vagrantfile like this:

Code: [Sélectionner]

Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
  config.vm.box     = "precise64"
  config.vm.box_url = "http://files.vagrantup.com/precise64.box"
end
And then type:`vagrant up`.

The base box downloads (once) they can start using it after it boots. That is to say, much of the process of spinning up a new virtual machine (VM) is automated.

When you're done with it, you type  `vagrant destroy` to delete the instance. The downloaded base box remains, however, and you can create a new instance whenever you want with `vagrant up`. Or you can create multiple instances.

Vagrant is probably most useful in defining environments for servers. You can see https://github.com/pdurbin/greptilian-vagrant as an example of this. I make adjustments in a test VM running on my laptop, save the configuration (using Puppet), and then later deploy the new configuration to the production server. That's one of the key features of Vagrant: its support for configuration management tools such as Puppet and Chef.

[konaexpress]

Still not sure I get it......

Do you have to load a distro in VBox and then do this from the command line or do you do this from the command line in the host install? In other words, do I open the terminal on my Mac and do this and I will have another VBox image to use or do I do this from inside a VBox image?


To bad you could not do this from a thumb drive, plug it in to a computer, pick an image from the list and POW!, it hard installs a new OS onto the computer..........(internet connection not included, some charges may apply)

[pdurbin]

In other words, do I open the terminal on my Mac and do this and I will have another VBox image

Yes, exactly. Vagrant is quite oriented toward the command line, which is a great benefit for those of who love it.