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Plugin Development: Packaging & Distribution
This page documents how to add new commands to Vagrant, invokable. This page documents how to organize the file structure of your plugin and distribute it so that it is installable using standard installation methods. Prior to reading this, you should be familiar with the plugin development basics.
Warning: Advanced Topic! Developing plugins is an advanced topic that only experienced Vagrant users who are reasonably comfortable with Ruby should approach.
Example Plugin
The best way to describe packaging and distribution is to look at how another plugin does it. The best example plugin available for this is vagrant-aws.
By using Bundler and Rake, building a new
vagrant-aws package is easy. By simply calling rake package, a
gem file is dropped into the directory. By calling rake release,
the gem is built and it is uploaded to the central RubyGems
repository so that it can be installed using vagrant plugin install.
Your plugin can and should be this easy, too, since you basically get this for free by using Bundler.
Setting Up Your Project
To setup your project, run bundle gem vagrant-my-plugin. This will create a
vagrant-my-plugin directory that has the initial layout to be a RubyGem.
You should modify the vagrant-my-plugin.gemspec file to add any
dependencies and change any metadata. View the vagrant-aws.gemspec
for a good example.
Do not depend on Vagrant for your gem. Vagrant is no longer distributed as a gem, and you can assume that it will always be available when your plugin is installed.
Next, create a Rakefile that has at the very least, the following
contents:
require 'rubygems'
require 'bundler/setup'
Bundler::GemHelper.install_tasks
If you run rake -T now, which lists all the available rake tasks,
you should see that you have the package and release tasks. You
can now develop your plugin and build it!
You can view the vagrant-aws Rakefile for a more comprehensive example that includes testing.
Testing Your Plugin
You have a couple options for testing your plugin. First, you can run
rake package, then vagrant plugin install the resulting file to
test it. The downside of this is that there is a pretty slow feedback
loop every time you want to test the plugin.
Alternatively, you can depend on Vagrant from your Gemfile for development
purposes only. Then you can use bundle exec vagrant and a Vagrantfile
in your own directory to test it. This has a fast feedback loop, but requires
that Vagrant has all the dependencies it needs installed on your system.
vagrant-aws uses the second option. You can see the dependency in the
Gemfile.
The Vagrantfile is gitignored so that sensitive and volatile test
information can be put into it. The important bit is that the Vagrantfile
must have a Vagrant.require_plugin call so that it is loaded, since
Vagrant doesn't automatically know about plugins not installed using
vagrant plugin.
For example, a vagrant-aws development Vagrantfile might look like this:
Vagrant.require_plugin "vagrant-aws"
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
config.vm.box = "test"
end
Then you can run bundle exec vagrant up to test it. Note the "bundle exec"
is required so that Bundler uses the proper Vagrant installation.