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Vagrant

Build and manage reproducible virtual machine environments

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Cloud & Services Development System & Monitoring linuxmacoswindows Ruby BUSL-1.1

Description

Vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow. It provides easy-to-configure, reproducible, and portable work environments using providers like VirtualBox, VMware, and Docker. Vagrant lowers development environment setup time and increases production parity.

Install

homebrewbrew install vagrant

AI Summary

Tool for building, configuring, and managing reproducible virtual machine environments using a simple declarative Vagrantfile with support for VirtualBox, VMware, Docker, and other providers.

Capabilities

  • + Create and configure virtual machines from a Vagrantfile
  • + Provision VMs with shell scripts, Ansible, Chef, or Puppet
  • + Share and distribute pre-built VM images (boxes)
  • + Sync folders between host and guest machines
  • + Configure networking, forwarded ports, and multi-machine setups
  • + Support multiple providers including VirtualBox, VMware, and Docker

Use When

  • → Setting up reproducible development environments across a team
  • → Need isolated virtual machines for testing or development
  • → Building multi-machine environments that mirror production
  • → Want declarative VM configuration checked into version control

Avoid When

  • x Working with containers (use Docker or Podman instead)
  • x Need lightweight ephemeral environments without full VMs
  • x Running on machines without virtualization support

Usage Patterns

Initialize and start a VM

vagrant init ubuntu/jammy64 && vagrant up

Creates a Vagrantfile with Ubuntu 22.04 and boots the VM

SSH into a running VM

vagrant ssh

Opens an SSH session to the default machine

Destroy and recreate from scratch

vagrant destroy -f && vagrant up

Tears down the VM and provisions a fresh one

Take and restore a snapshot

vagrant snapshot save clean-state

Saves the current VM state for later restoration

Input / Output

stdin: Accepts confirmation input for destructive operations
stdout: VM status, provisioning output, and SSH session
stderr: Error messages and provider warnings

Typical Pipelines

vagrant up && vagrant ssh -c 'run-tests.sh' to boot a VM and run tests
vagrant status | grep running to check which machines are active
vagrant snapshot save before-update && vagrant provision to safely re-provision

Related Tools

docker alternative

Docker provides lightweight containers; Vagrant manages full virtual machines
pulumi complementary

Pulumi manages cloud infrastructure; Vagrant manages local VMs
distrobox alternative

Distrobox uses containers for development environments instead of VMs
View AGENTS.md for Vagrant