Add support for custom Vagrant boxes

[jtreminio]

Currently PuPHPet enforces the use of the official Vagrant Ubuntu-based box files.

Many people may not be too thrilled with idea of using Ubuntu on VM, they may want to enter in their own box URL.

Problem: we currently do not support non-Debian based OS. We can either tackle this easy problem and warn the user first, or tackle the harder problem of making the vagrant code work with either OS.

Related to https://github.com/puphpet/vagrant-puppet-lamp/issues/5

[frastel]

I think we should focus on those boxes which are official supported by Vagrant and that means only Ubuntu (Lucid and Precise Pangolian). The majority of the vagrant users will use Ubuntu and I think we have to satisfy their needs and requirements.
If we head on providing several OS we certainly will loose development speed.

However we should choose between the vendor puppet modules very carefully and should select only those which may support different OS already. This will reduce the amount of work we have to do on our own laterwards.

[marltu]

I don't see anywhere in Vagrant documentation that it says that Ubuntu is officially supported OS. I see that Vagrant uses Ubuntu as an example installation but that doesn't say that Ubuntu somehow special to Vagrant.

Can someone point to location where it says that Ubuntu is the only one officially supported by Vagrant?

[scoutman57]

Ubuntu is not the officially supported OS, they just have a Ubuntu base already created that people can use. Vagrant supports several distros.

[frastel]

Ok let me take it the other way round: Vagrant currently hosts/provides only Ubuntu base boxes and on those we put our focus. Otherwise we would not know which base box a developer wants to use and this is really hard to maintain. We could build our own (this would be pain in the a***) Debian base image for example but who guarantees that every Debian developer will use the same image?

[frastel]

@marltu Here is a list of boxes which are provided by Vagrant directly https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/wiki/Available-Vagrant-Boxes. As @w2pc said other distros are also supported by Vagrant but those base boxes are hosted in user land.

[marltu]

But do we really need to use the same image? Maybe we can make a link to custom vagrant box and if it uses sane defaults, it just works? Maybe some path, package name configuration based on OS in puppet?

[ghost]

What about using the puppetlabs vagrant boxes found here? http://www.vagrantbox.es/

ie these:
http://puppet-vagrant-boxes.puppetlabs.com/ubuntu-server-12042-x64-vbox4210.box
http://puppet-vagrant-boxes.puppetlabs.com/centos-64-x64-vbox4210.box

Here is a list of all the boxes they have
http://puppet-vagrant-boxes.puppetlabs.com/

Just a thought.

[tvlooy]

Ubuntu provides Vagrant boxes themselves now http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/vagrant/

[jtreminio]

Added Debian OS's: f073388

[jtreminio]

f073388 was reverted due to issues with repo source. As soon as I wrestle Puppet into working, Debian will be added back in.

[jtreminio]

Closed by c92b8ce

I don't think I want to add option for allowing users to enter in their own box URLs, as it would simply add more noise to the already busy forms. You can always change the URL manually in the Vagrantfile

[NoelDavies]

@jtreminio, that's all well and good, but the disks are only 20GB by default, nowhere near big enough for large projects.

[jtreminio]

@NoelDavies, if you want to set your own box url you can create a config-custom.yaml and overwrite it in there.

[NoelDavies]

@jtreminio I understand that, but how do you specify a local version of that box?