Vagrant

This repository contains the configuration files necessary to create the Space Concordia development environment.

Installation

Before outlining the installation steps, one feature of Vagrant should be clarified. Vagrant will share the directory that contains the Vagrantfile with the /vagrant directory on the VM. By "share" I mean that the two directories are identical. Changes made in one directory will be immediately applied to the other, because they are simply the same directory. This fact will be exploited to easily share and sync files from the host machine to the VM and back.

1. Install git, Vagrant, and VirtualBox. On Linux, this can be done using your distribution's package manager e.g. on Ubuntu, run the command sudo apt install git vagrant virtualbox. Windows does not have a package manager so you will need to visit the websites of each tool and install them manually. Note that if you are on Windows, you should execute the remaining steps in Git Bash.

2. Clone this repository in the directory of your choice i.e. use cd to navigate to the desired directory and run git clone https://github.com/spaceconcordia/vagrant.

3. If you plan on using the terminal for development, create a files directory (i.e. mkdir files) and store any configuration files you think you may use, such as your .vimrc. These files can be accessed from within the VM.

4. Run vagrant up. This will take a while to execute, as the box must download and be provisioned.

5. Run vagrant ssh to SSH into the virtual machine. You should configure git with git config --global user.name "Your Name" and git config --global user.email "[email protected]". You can find the configuration files you made in step 3 in the directory /vagrant/files.

6. Run sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade to upgrade packages. If you are prompted about GRUB, just hit enter and say yes.

7. Create a directory space-concordia in /vagrant. All repositories will be cloned here.

8. Once you are finished, you can exit the VM with logout or Ctrl-D.

9. Terminate the VM with vagrant halt if you so wish. Note that if you do not terminate the VM you will essentially be having another OS running in the background.

Workflow

If you want to write some code,

1. Open a terminal or Git Bash as appropriate and cd into the Vagrant directory.

2. Run git pull. If there were no changes to the repository, simply run vagrant up. Otherwise, run vagrant up --provision.

3. Run vagrant ssh.

4. Upgrade packages with sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade.

5. Run cd /vagrant/space-concordia and start hacking!

6. When you are finished, run logout or Ctrl-D. If you think you will resume work soon, run vagrant suspend. Otherwise, run vagrant halt to shut down the VM.