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| layout | title |
|---|---|
| getting_started | Getting Started |
Getting Started with Vagrant
Vagrant uses Oracle's VirtualBox to build configurable, lightweight, and portable virtual machines dynamically. The first couple pages serve to introduce you to Vagrant and what it has to offer while the rest of the guide is a technical walkthrough for building a fully functional Ruby on Rails development environment. The getting started guide concludes by explaining how to package the newly created vagrant environment so other developers can get up and running in just a couple commands.
Get VirtualBox
Vagrant depends on Oracle's VirtualBox to create all of it's virtual environments. VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software. VirtualBox runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris.
Here is a link directly to the download page.
Version 3.2 or Higher!
Vagrant requires at least version 3.2 of VirtualBox. If your package manager is still stuck on version 3.1 or lower, then download the 3.2 installation package from the official VirtualBox download page.
Setting up Ruby and RubyGems
Although Vagrant is written in Ruby, web developers from many different languages come to use it (Python, Java, Clojure, etc.). Therefore, if you've never setup Ruby or RubyGems before, please check out our basic guides, written for different popular operating systems listed below:
Is your OS not listed above? Feel free ask for help via our support channels. Or if you figure it out on your own, let us know how and we'll gladly update the website.
Install Vagrant
Vagrant is packaged as a RubyGem. Since Vagrant is written in Ruby and RubyGems is a standard part of most Ruby installations, RubyGems is the quickest and easiest way to distribute Vagrant to the masses, and it can be installed just as easily:
{% highlight bash %} $ gem install vagrant {% endhighlight %}
Your First Vagrant Virtual Environment
{% highlight bash %} $ vagrant box add lucid32 http://files.vagrantup.com/lucid32.box $ vagrant init lucid32 $ vagrant up {% endhighlight %}
While the rest of the getting started guide will focus on explaining how to build a fully functional virtual machine to serve rails applications, you should get used to the above snippet of code. After the initial setup of any Vagrant environment, the above is all any developer will need to create their development environment! Note that the above snippet does actually create a fully functional 512MB virtual machine running Ubuntu in the background, although the machine doesn't do much in this state.