Using Vagrant on your personal
computer
Why use Virtual Machines? And why Vagrant?
We’re glad that you’re adapting to the Framework! Always ask why!
It is important to ask yourself: “Why am I not just developing on my computer? I have all the
tools I need!”.
My machine vs. virtual environments
Your computer’s environment - whether it’s Windows, MacOS or a Linux distribution - will
change a lot over time, with or without you noticing. You will install applications, games,
tools, … that will require and install different dependencies and at the end of the day you can
end up having completely different behaviors or even have something not work because of
software conflicts.
We won’t go into the details of Virtual Machines, but as their name says, they are Virtual
“Computers” that will emulate everything from the CPU to the RAM and Disk. Virtual
Machines in the context of development are a means to isolate and maintain a stable
environment that will basically run the same way on any host (any computer). This way,
you can have any software installed on your Windows, MacOS, or whatever Linux
distribution; your Virtual Machine will run its own environment, have its own programs, with
their own versions, etc.
Using virtual environments prevents developers from saying “I don’t understand, it works
on my machine …”. Here at School, we want to make sure that you have access to the
same environment that will be used to correct your work (the Checker).
The tools
There are multiple tools out there that can help you create and manage virtual environments
(notice that we use the term “virtual environment” here, as such an environment is not
necessarily a VM. Technologies using containerization allow one to manage virtual
environments as well).
We are using two tools at school: VirtualBox and Vagrant.
VirtualBox is a Virtual Machine provider. The virtual machines themselves will be spawned
using VirtualBox. VirtualBox is free and lightweight, which makes it a perfect choice for us.
Vagrant is a tool that sits on top of a VM provider. Again, we chose to use VirtualBox as a
provider, but other providers exist out there and Vagrant offers the possibility to use different
providers (More info here). Just like VirtualBox, we choose to use Vagrant because it is free,
reliable and well maintained. Keep in mind that the purpose here is to use Virtual
environments, and both VirtualBox and Vagrant are just means to achieve this purpose.
Alternatives
As mentioned previously, using VirtualBox and Vagrant at school doesn’t mean that all
companies are going to work exactly the same way. Different tools are used, as well as
different development workflows. We want you to understand how important it is to isolate
your development environment from any host machine, whether it’s your personal computer
or one of the school’s computers.
Here are some examples of other softwares out there that are widely used to manage virtual
environments:
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The VMWare products
○ VMWare is one of the biggest virtualization companies in the industry.
○ It is safe to say that their tools are among the most reliable.
○ On the other hand, most of their tools come for a price.
Docker
○ Containerization is a very good and efficient alternative to VMs for
development environments
○ Containers are much more lightweight than VMs, thus much faster to start
and stop.
○ The inconvenience of containers is that they sit on top of your OS. Unlike
virtual machines, they don’t emulate the hardware, but rather share your
machine’s hardware. We won’t go into the details of how containerization
works, but to keep it simple, that means that if you run MacOS, it is not
possible to run a Linux or Windows container. (Docker makes it work using
VMs).
More info here
Conclusion
VirtualBox and Vagrant together allow you to manage and ship isolated development
environments. Those isolated environments in the context of the school (and in the future, in
the context of a company) allow you to match the environment we use to automatically
check your work.
Although both VirtualBox and Vagrant are widely used in the industry, it doesn’t mean it is
the only means to achieve virtualization, and other tools exist with their pros and cons.