CODEWITHSUNDEEP
virtual-machinedevelopment-environment
Rontogiannis Aristofanis
Rontogiannis Aristofanis

Reputation: 9063

How to create and share a VM environment for development

I am working on a college project along with a group of people. Our goal is to add features to an already existing application that runs on the web. Currently, I'm in the process of getting the source code to run on my machine. This consists of cloning a bunch of repos, installing MySQL and some (very old and outdated :-| ) versions of Python, and running some scripts. The process sounds straightforward but it isn't; there are a lot of dependancies that need to be met for the code to run, which means that I need to spend a lot of time looking at error logs trying to figure out what package is missing and needs to be installed or downgraded. But that's not the point of this question.

I'd like to make it easier for people to pick up the project in the future and work on it without having to spend hours just to get the code to compile. I'd like to get the project set up on a Linux VM (something I know how to do using VirtualBox) and then somehow share (?) that VM so that other people can simply set it up and be able to immediately have the code compiling (something that I don't know how to do, or if it is even possible).

Additionally, I'd like to be able to do all the coding on the host OS if possible, and only do the compiling/running on the VM (something I also don't know how to do). I would like some help/pointers with all the "I don't know" 's, as I don't know much about VM's other than how to set one up using VirtualBox.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1631

Answers (1)

DV82XL
DV82XL

Reputation: 6629

You can use Vagrant to automate the provisioning of the VM, and setup all your tools and dependencies using Docker.

There are many good tutorials and sample vagrantfiles online to get you started. There is a learning curve involved, but well worth the effort. Many companies use Vagrant to quickly provision dev environments.

Vagrant can automatically download a specific distro/version of a VM from the web if one is not already locally installed. It can also provision a Docker container, in which you can install any required dependencies, tools, etc. You can store the vagrantfile, dockerfile, scripts, etc. in GitHub for easy access by your colleagues. All they would have to do is install Vagrant and run vagrant up from the command line.

If you want to write code on the host machine and compile/test it on the VM, you will need to setup a shared folder in the VM using Guest Additions (see here). Be VERY careful with line endings if you are working in Windows and running in Linux. You can setup the shared folder with Vagrant as well (see here).

Upvotes: 1

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