Give your development a portable home with Vagrant

Who Am I?

Been using computers before it was cool

Gavin Mogan

@halkeye

http://www.gavinmogan.com

So what am I talking about?

What is Vagrant?

Vagrant is a simple tool that makes it easy to setup Virtual Machines

Its a pretty powerful tools.

Only covering the basics

And why should I care?

• Documentation
• • Always out of date.
• Mentoring
• • People often forget things they have not used in a while.
• Onboarding
• • Pretty much the previous two combined.
• Don't want to wait to get started.

Sam - Developer

• Has been working on the project "forever"
• Lots of linux experience
• Likes to tinker with the build process

"Sam" by Heather L. Gilbraith

Alex - Designer

• Wants project to just work
• Wants focus on getting work done
• Often frustrated with Sam

"Alex" by Heather L. Gilbraith

You - ???

• New to the project
• Different Location?
• Often frustrated with Sam

Scene!

1. Sam adds a new image compression tool to the builds
2. Sam pushes the code
3. Sam forgot to update the documentation to include instructions
   • Windows - Good luck
   • Linux - apt-get install libpng-dev
   • OSX - brew install libpng
4. Alex pulls down new code
5. Alex's build brakes, and is now blocked. Yells for Sam
6. FIGHT!

Now with vagrant!

1. Sam adds a new image compression tool to the builds
2. Sam adds "apt-get install libpng-dev" to Vagrantfile
3. Alex pulls down new code
4. Alex runs vagrant provision
5. Alex keeps working​

Real Life Example

jQuery Documentation Site

So what is vagrant?

• A way to quickly setup a consistent environment
• It doesn't care what you are running, its only job is to setup a working environment
• Re-creatable
• Great tool for getting everyone to have a consistent environment 

Did I mention consistent?

How does it work?

• Uses virtual machine software, at this point almost everything is available
  • Virtual Box, VMWare, Hyper-V (windows), Docker, Probably more

No really, How does it work?

1. Install your favourite Virtual Machine System
   • I suggest virtualbox
   • Don't install (or at least don't run) multiple
2. ​Install Vagrant
   • ​​Very easy installer for most platforms
   • https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
3. Launch terminal/command prompt
4. Change to project directory
5. vagrant init ubuntu/trusty64
   • Lots of options - https://atlas.hashicorp.com/boxes/search
6. vagrant up
7. vagrant ssh

Well that's not super useful.

Now what?

• Config file (Vagrantfile) is really well documented
• Can setup port forwards
• Shared directories
• Provisioning
  • Simple Shell scripts
  • Puppet
  • Chef
  • Ansible
  • More

Bonus

# Vagrantfile

# Real file is super commented

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|  
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64"

  # stuff                                                                                                              
  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL                                                                                                      
     sudo apt-get update                                                                                                                              
     sudo apt-get install -y libpng-dev                                                                                                                  
  SHELL                                                                                                                                              
end             

Gavin Mogan

@halkeye

http://www.gavinmogan.com

Thanks!

YVR Developers Slack - http://yvrdev.herokuapp.com/