Installation Guide

Introduction

To simplify setting up the GMAT build environment, the DigitalSats open source project is providing an Ubuntu virtual machine with the GMAT development environment preinstalled. This is packaged as a Vagrant virtual machine, box, and accompanying bash scripts.

This write up is intended to guide those interested on installing the GMAT development virtual machine using Vagrant. It assumes nothing other than a fairly recent version of the host operating system, Linux, Windows or OSX is available.

If desired, you may also use an Ubuntu 18.04 native host and clone the Smallsats git repository into your home directory. In this case, you can skip to the section on installing GMAT dependencies.

In the near future, OSX and Windows native development boxes will be made available.

Assumptions

This document assumes that you know how to get to your home directory from the command line:

Windows systems:

• Command Prompt Window

cd \Users\[your user id]

• Powershell Window

cd ~

Linux and OSx systems Terminal window:

cd ~

It also assumes you know which directory your web browser will download files into, by default this is the Downloads directory under your home directory.

If you have changed your web browser's download directory, please make the appropriate changes to the instructions, below.

Vagrant Terminology

Vagrant is an open source command line environment created by HashiCorp to help with the distribution and customization of virtual machines and docker images. It has its own terminology, see below. It runs on Linux, Windows and OSx. The terms, below, will be used in the rest of this document.

Term	Explanation
base box	A box, see below, containing a minimum version of an operating system. Usually, supplied by OS distributors or volunteers. gmat_build is currently based on an Ubuntu 18.04 base box.
box	A machine instance, defined by a Vagrantfile. AKA guest.
guest	See box, above.
host	The "real" machine running Linux, Windows or OSx.
provider	The virtual machine's virtualization application or environment. The default is VirtualBox. There are a host of other providers available, including VMware, esxi, Digital Ocean, AWS, Google, Azure and docker. A Vagrantfile can specify one or more providers. The providers are checked in a user specified order to see which is to be used.
snapshot	A method to quickly save and possibly restore the state of a box. Saving or restoring a sanpshot takes seconds.
Vagrantfile	Text file description of a box.