Vagrant VM quickstart for Python projects

Basic config and provisioning scripts for bootstrapping a VM to run a Python project.

Installs:

• essential Python packages and PostgreSQL database server & client on the system
• PyPI packages from a requirements file to a virtualenv

Sets up some reasonable default choices assuming you want to be able to access the project repository via the filesystem and access a dev server running on the VM via the browser on the host.

Creates a default database for PostgreSQL for {{ vagrant_user }} var value. DB name, role (username) and password all match likewise.

Usage

First up, get a copy of the repo:

$ mkdir -p ~/boxes/pyvm
$ cd ~/boxes/pyvm
$ git clone https://github.com/mattoc/python-vm-quickstart.git

Edit the Vagrantfile and replace the paths as necessary for the config.vm.synced_folder var for your local and desired remote path.

Update the Ansible playbook.yml and set the project_alias to match your own project's root directory name.

If your project uses a custom requirements path (such as Mezzanine's $project/$app/requirements/project.txt layout) then update the requirements var in playbook.yml accordingly.

$ vagrant up
[... waiting ...]
$ vagrant ssh
...
(myproject)vagrant@precise32:~$

And you should be ready to go!

For a Django project:

(myproject)vagrant@precise32:~$ cd myproject
(myproject)vagrant@precise32:~$ python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

Visit http://localhost:54321 on the host and you should see the app served by the Django development server running on the VM.

Problems?

If you experience an "SSLError: The read operation timed out" timeout when running the playbook (such as when installing packages via pip) run the following on the host to re-run the bootstrap script:

$ ansible-playbook -i ansible_hosts playbook.yml

You may need to run the same command with the -T or -timeout flag with a higher timeout in seconds.

Prerequisites

On the host machine you'll need VirtualBox (or another VM provider), Vagrant and Ansible installed.