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:
- 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
- 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.
- 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'
