Announcing vagrantwrapper, use one Vagrantfile for all your projects.

Vagrant wrapper allows you to store a single Vagrantfile in a predefined location $VAGRANTW_DIR and use that across multiple projects with ease. Think like the popular virtualenvwrapper but for Vagrant.

An Example

Let’s say for instance I have a project that looks like the following:

./example
└── main.c 
0 directories, 1 file

And I need to test if it compiles on Ubuntu when I’m running on a Mac or Fedora. In this situation you have a few options:

  1. Spin up a VM using Vagrant

The problem here is then I’d have to add a Vagrantfile to this projects repo and either commit it or Gitignore it. This becomes more arduous when you have multiple projects like this since you have to maintain a Vagrantfile per project. So our project looks like this:

./example
└── main.c
└── Vagrantfile

0 directories, 1 file
  1. Use a docker container

The problem with docker containers is shared with that of the above solution of ‘Vagrant per project’. You have to pre-provision, and pre-build a container or VM image and then always use it. Containers don’t maintain state so if you spend some time installing development dependencies in a container that work will be lost. Additionally, containers are not always representative of a real system (for example if you’re working on a SystemD unit file and or init system related problems you can’t properly use a container) where a real VM is.

  1. Remote VPS or EC2 instance

Syncing your data to and from a remote machine is an arduous process at best. Additionally if you want to develop on a remote machine that means you’re limited on what tools you can use and have to provision / maintain this machine as a development environment.

Vagrant wrapper to the rescue

Vagrant is a great tool and will automatically sync your data from the host machine to remote. But due to the problems outlined in 1. it makes it difficult to use on projects that are not centered around it or want to maintain a shared Vagrantfile.

Vagrant wrapper solves this by letting you store a shared Vagrantfile in a directory elsewhere on your file system and letting you create multiple VMs using a single Vagrantfile. Once it’s installed we can just run vagrant commands through it and it will manage creating VMs for us and syning our directories properly as if the Vagrantfile was in our current working directory:

~/Code/example  vagrantw up
/Users/chasinglogic/.vagrantwrapper not found creating...
Creating default Vagrantfile...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  3250  100  3250    0     0  15218      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 15258
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> default: Importing base box 'ubuntu/bionic64'...
==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
==> default: Checking if box 'ubuntu/bionic64' is up to date...
==> default: Setting the name of the VM: example_default_1542487881348_11610
==> default: Fixed port collision for 22 => 2222. Now on port 2200.
==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
    default: Adapter 1: nat
==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 22 (guest) => 2200 (host) (adapter 1)
==> default: Running 'pre-boot' VM customizations...
==> default: Booting VM...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2200
    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
    default: Warning: Connection reset. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Connection reset. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Connection reset. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Connection reset. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Connection reset. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...
    default:
    default: Vagrant insecure key detected. Vagrant will automatically replace
    default: this with a newly generated keypair for better security.
    default:
    default: Inserting generated public key within guest...
    default: Removing insecure key from the guest if it's present...
    default: Key inserted! Disconnecting and reconnecting using new SSH key...
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM...
==> default: Mounting shared folders...
    default: /vagrant => /Users/chasinglogic/Code/example
~/Code/example

It requires zero setup other than installation to get started.

How it Works

Vagrant wrapper is a fairly simple bash script that requires a one line change in your Vagrantfile to work.

First vagrant wrapper grabs whatever the current working directory is and stores this value for later use. Then it finds the directory at the environment variable $VAGRANTW_DIR ($HOME/.vagrantwrapper by default). If the directory does not exist it creates it.

It uses the Vagrantfile found at $VAGRANTW_DIR/Vagrantfile as the base for all environments it creates. If this file is not found it downloads the Vagrantfile from this repository which is an Ubuntu 18.04 box.

It then creates an “environment” where vagrant will store it’s local .vagrant folder. This environment is stored at $VAGRANTW_DIR/environments/$ENVIRONMENT_NAME. The environment name is always equal to the basename of the pwd of where vagrantw was invoked. So in our example above it was: /home/chasinglogic/.vagrantwrapper/environments/example.

It then symlinks the VAGRANTW_DIR/Vagrantfile into this new environment directory. After that, it changes directory into this new environment directory and invokes vagrant passing through the arguments passed to vagrantw.

Installation

If you’re interested in using vagrant wrapper there is an install script which you can use with the following command:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chasinglogic/vagrantwrapper/master/install.sh | bash

By default this will install into $HOME/.local/bin if you would like to install vagrant wrapper somewhere else set the environment variable $INSTALL_DIR to that location before running the above.

Usage
Usage: vagrantw [options] [<args>...]

Vagrant wrapper, a way to use one Vagrantfile for all your projects. ARGS is
always passed directly through to vagrant and so any flags or commands that
vagrant accepts this wrapper will as well. The only exceptions being '-h' and
'-n' as described below.

The '-a' argument is used to run a vagrant command against all machines
managed by vagrant wrapper. Useful for common tasks like shutting down all
VMs.

Options:
    -h         Print this help message and exit.
    -a         Run vagrant command on all known environments
    -n <name>  Name for this new environment. This defaults to the
               basename of the present working directory.

For vagrant help and not the help for this script run 'vagrantw help' or
'vagrantw --help'

Linux and FOSS Enthusiast. I do the Dev and the Ops and sometimes both at once.

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