Use Vagrant for cross environment development

What's Vagrant?

Vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases production parity, and makes the "works on my machine" excuse a relic of the past.

Why Vagrant?

Vagrant provides easy to configure, reproducible, and portable work environments built on top of industry-standard technology and controlled by a single consistent workflow to help maximize the productivity and flexibility of you and your team.

Getting Started

sudo apt update
sudo apt install virtualbox

curl -O https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/2.2.9/vagrant_2.2.9_x86_64.deb
sudo apt install ./vagrant_2.2.9_x86_64.deb

Init environment

Run the command to init a new vagrant development environment using ubuntu 20.04.

vagrant init bento/ubuntu-20.04

The script will generate a initial Vagrantfile.

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

# All Vagrant configuration is done below. The "2" in Vagrant.configure
# configures the configuration version (we support older styles for
# backwards compatibility). Please don't change it unless you know what
# you're doing.
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
# The most common configuration options are documented and commented below.
# For a complete reference, please see the online documentation at
# https://docs.vagrantup.com.

# Every Vagrant development environment requires a box. You can search for
# boxes at https://vagrantcloud.com/search.
config.vm.box = "bento/ubuntu-20.04"

# Disable automatic box update checking. If you disable this, then
# boxes will only be checked for updates when the user runs
# `vagrant box outdated`. This is not recommended.
# config.vm.box_check_update = false

# Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
# within the machine from a port on the host machine. In the example below,
# accessing "localhost:8080" will access port 80 on the guest machine.
# NOTE: This will enable public access to the opened port
# config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080

# Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
# within the machine from a port on the host machine and only allow access
# via 127.0.0.1 to disable public access
# config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080, host_ip: "127.0.0.1"

# Create a private network, which allows host-only access to the machine
# using a specific IP.
# config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.33.10"

# Create a public network, which generally matched to bridged network.
# Bridged networks make the machine appear as another physical device on
# your network.
# config.vm.network "public_network"

# Share an additional folder to the guest VM. The first argument is
# the path on the host to the actual folder. The second argument is
# the path on the guest to mount the folder. And the optional third
# argument is a set of non-required options.
# config.vm.synced_folder "../data", "/vagrant_data"

# Provider-specific configuration so you can fine-tune various
# backing providers for Vagrant. These expose provider-specific options.
# Example for VirtualBox:
#
# config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
# # Display the VirtualBox GUI when booting the machine
# vb.gui = true
#
# # Customize the amount of memory on the VM:
# vb.memory = "1024"
# end
#
# View the documentation for the provider you are using for more
# information on available options.

# Enable provisioning with a shell script. Additional provisioners such as
# Ansible, Chef, Docker, Puppet and Salt are also available. Please see the
# documentation for more information about their specific syntax and use.
# config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
# apt-get update
# apt-get install -y apache2
# SHELL
end
  • Enable config.vm.synced_folder "./", "/vagrant_data" to share folder with the virtual machine.
  • Enable config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080 to expose virtual machine port 80 to localhost:8080
  • To install required packages on init. Enable:
config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
apt-get update
apt-get install url -y
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/master/install.sh | bash
SHELL

Up and run

vagrant up


Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> default: Box 'bento/ubuntu-20.04' could not be found. Attempting to find and install...
default: Box Provider: virtualbox
default: Box Version: >= 0
==> default: Loading metadata for box 'bento/ubuntu-20.04'
default: URL: https://vagrantcloud.com/bento/ubuntu-20.04
==> default: Adding box 'bento/ubuntu-20.04' (v202012.23.0) for provider: virtualbox
default: Downloading: https://vagrantcloud.com/bento/boxes/ubuntu-20.04/versions/202012.23.0/providers/virtualbox.box
==> default: Box download is resuming from prior download progress
Download redirected to host: vagrantcloud-files-production.s3.amazonaws.com
Progress: 0% (Rate: 215k/s, Estimated time remaining: 0:34:56)

Connect to the VM

vagrant ssh

Stop the VM

  • Stop without destroy the VM
vagrant halt
  • Stop and destroy the VM
vagrant destroy