In order to provide consistent development environments, we have created a Vagrant powered virtual machine to simplify setup and reduce potential machine configuration errors. These machines work across Windows, OS X, and Linux machines, ensuring developers on any operating system can all develop in a consistent way.
All of the virtual machines require the following to be installed. All requirements have downloadable installers, so no fumbling with the command line needed.
It is also recommended you register for a GitHub account, follow the first-time Git setup instructions, and add an SSH key to Git. This will ensure that your machine is ready and able to interface with Git on the virtual machines.
While our virtual machines will work on Windows machines only following the above steps, it is recommended the following steps are also performed in order to provide a more consistent command line experience.
- Download Console 2
- Extract
Console.exe - Add
Console.exeshortcut to Desktop - Open
Console.exe, go toEdit->Settingsand set the shell to PowerShell (usuallyC:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe) - Set the Startup dir to your User directory
- Restart
Console.exe
This will let you access your terminal easily through Console 2 and let you use PowerShell, a much more powerful command line shell for Windows than the standard cmd.
Once you have the above installed, spinning up a virtual machine is as simple as picking which environment you'd like to use, copying the contents of of the Recommended Vagrantfile (the part in the code block, not the exposition) into a file named Vagrantfile in the directory you'd like to work in, and running vagrant up. Remember to commit your Vagrantfile into your version control system.
If you have the Watson Yeoman Generator installed, you can call yo watson:environment or yo watson:env to scaffold out your Vagrantfile for you and stand up your virtual machine.
You can edit all of the files in your working folder with your local tools, no need to change anything you do in that regard! To run commands in the virtual machine, run vagrant ssh in your terminal from the folder your Vagrantfile is in. This will bring you into your virtual machine where you can run your commands as normal. To exit your virtual machine while inside it and bring you back to your computer, run the exit command.
If you have a single command you would like to run inside your virtual machine from the root of your shared folder (relative to the folder your Vagrantfile is in), you can run vagrant ssh -c "{{command}}" replacing {{command}} with the command you would like to run. This supports interactive prompts, so Yeoman generators, Compass watch, and the like will all work and provide active feedback.
While inside your virtual machine, the default prompt is zsh with Oh My ZSH. We have written a custom theme for Oh My ZSH that is on by default.
If you would like to add additional provisioning on top of an environment, keep in mind that it will run through an interactive ZSH prompt that does start by sourcing Oh My ZSH and the like.
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