
Vagrant is a tool for building virtualized development environments. - lox
http://vagrantup.com/
======
mitchellh
Why hello there! I'm the maintainer/developer behind Vagrant and I'm happy to
answer any questions there may be about the project whether it be conceptual
or directly related to how Vagrant works.

I didn't expect to see this on HN today but I guess I'll just give a giant
information dump here for those interested :)

Good links for those interested in what Vagrant is:

* "Why Vagrant?" - <http://vagrantup.com/docs/getting-started/why.html>

* "Frequently Asked Questions" - <http://vagrantup.com/faq.html>

* The code - <https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant>

* The original HN submission when Vagrant was launched (286 days ago) - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1175901>

And then a quick update for those who want to know whats going on with the
project now:

The project has been nonstop since January this year, and the codebase is
nearing one year old. Vagrant is now on version 0.6.8. Vagrant is used by many
companies worldwide and the 0.6.x series is considered stable. In September
2010 I gained sponsorship for my work on Vagrant by Engine Yard[1]. I've been
working very hard for the past 2 months to get the project working with other
hypervisors (KVM, VMWare), spurring other open source projects of my own in
the process (libvirt-rb, virtuoso, you can find these at my github[2]).

[1]: [http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2010/mitchell-hashimoto-
joins...](http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2010/mitchell-hashimoto-joins-engine-
yard-oss-community-grant-program/)

[2]: <http://github.com/mitchellh>

~~~
yesno
Hi mitchellh. I haven't used vagrant yet but the tool looks great! It will
probably be a superb addition to my day-to-day toolbox (I'm a new VirtualBox
user). Thank you for creating the tool.

In a probably unrelated question to vagrant, would you happen to know if
VirtualBox virtual hdd can be shrinked and expanded? And if VB can, does
vagrant support that?

Use-case: one 8GB (only use 2GB total) vm instance to be moved from Windows
Server to Ubuntu Linux. Or for cloning purposes. Copying 8GB probably would
take a lot of time, compacting it to 2GB first then copying it to multiple
machines probably would be a lot faster.

Thanks again for creating vagrant!

~~~
mitchellh
VirtualBox does not support resizing disks. You can use other tools (qemu
command line comes to mind) to do things like this, but it takes a LONG time
and is generally not worth it. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in
this space. "libguestfs" looks promising for the future, but I haven't
evaluated if its useful for your purpose at the moment.

~~~
anko
According to this: [http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2010/12/virtualbox-4-beta-on-
sol...](http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2010/12/virtualbox-4-beta-on-solaris.html)
resizing disks is coming in version 4!

------
kanwisher
I've always dreamed of carrying around a netbook to exotic locales and then
firing up remote EC2 instances with huge multicpu servers and having a full
dev setup for a few hours while in a cafe in the middle of the jungle.

~~~
mitchellh
I can only say I plan on making this a reality in 2011.

------
gnubardt
I have an Archlinux base box available here:
<http://gotanysnacks.com/vagrant/>

Also, it's well worth the effort to learn Chef (or another automated
provisioning tool) if you haven't already. It makes working with Vagrant way
easier and saves you time whenever you create a new environment. Plus you can
use the same recipes on a production box, so the effort isn't wasted.

------
mduvall
This is neat, I wish there was a screencast or something of the sort up to
recap the major points of this application. Does anybody know from experience
how flexible it is for recreating an environment close to your own on any *nix
based system?

------
AdamGibbins
Would really love a KVM version, simply because you can't run VirtualBox while
you have the KVM modules loaded which is annoying as I run multiple KVM VMs.

Is there any future chance of libvirt compatibility as an option?

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andrewvc
I use vagrant every day, it's really a must-have for a complex stack.

------
jjoe
Why is the Vagrant character missing the front of his footwear exposing his
toes?

Regards

Joe

~~~
benkant
That'd be... because he's a vagrant.

------
Uchikoma
Tried it several times on a Windows Box without success. Had troubles trying
several Ruby versions, neither version worked.

~~~
mitchellh
Vagrant, for the time being, only works on 32-bit windows. I'm going to take a
guess that you didn't get this working because it kept saying "VirtualBox not
detected!" and you're on 64-bit. If this is the case, then work is currently
underway to fix this.

If you're not on 64-bit windows, I'd love to work with you to hear what your
experience was and what went wrong.

Negative experiences like the one you had are unfortunate, but through them we
can fix it and make it better for everyone else.

You don't have any contact info in your profile, please contact me at
mitchell.hashimoto@gmail.com or through github, irc, etc.

~~~
Uchikoma
Should be 32bit - will contact you with the error messages -
stephan.schmidt@interimcto.de should work otherwise.

The problems have been mentioned several times on the internet when I did
google, but no solution were mentioned.

