Vagrant

Vagrant is a tool for quickly and easily creating a development environment. It is a program that helps you deploy a virtual environment and get set up to work on a new project by:

• cloning repositories;
• loading the necessary libraries and packages;
• rolling up databases, software;
• configuring correctly. 

This can all be done manually, but why waste the time?

So why use Vagrant

The key benefit of Vagrant is that the program automates and speeds up preparatory procedures for the whole team all at once. It creates a ready-made environment in which you can start working on your project immediately. Without Vagrant, every developer on the team would have to set up repositories, libraries, and software when reinstalling the OS or switching to a new workstation. 

How it works

Unlike virtual machines with a graphical shell, Vagrant works only in terminal mode, on the command line. Simply put, the code editor is mounted in the main operating system, The project code is also stored on the main machine but it is run in the virtual environment. This has certain advantages: the project remains in an isolated environment and does not conflict with any other system, but the environment can be quickly moved or recreated.

How to install Vagrant 

First, you will need a virtualization system for your operating system – VirtualBox is the default. Then you need to download the installer for the desired operating system. Vagrant is supported by macOS, Windows, and most of the Linux family of operating systems. 

For stable operation, it is important to check that the BIOS settings are set up to start virtualization correctly. Also, do not run Vagrant as an administrator or superuser, or as a Cyrillic user on Windows. If the program runs slowly, check the settings for synchronizing a folder with the project – Vagrant offers several options.