With the virtual machine working and ready, we’re ready to get to work. But let’s assume in this situation that you have other team members, and you want to share the same virtual environment with them. Let’s package this new environment into a box for them so they can get up and running with just a few keystrokes.
Packages are exported images of your current virtual environment which can be easily distributed. They’re typically suffixed with a “box” extension, hence they are known as box files. Optionally, Vagrantfiles can be included with boxes, which can be used to specify forwarded ports, shared folders, etc.
Before working through the rest of this page, make sure the virtual environment is built by running vagrant up.
First, we’re going to create a basic Vagrantfile we’ll package with the box which will forward the web port. This way, users of the box can simply add the box, do a vagrant up, and have everything working, including HTTP! Create a new file, which will be the file used as the Vagrantfile for the box. Name the file Vagrantfile.pkg and put the following contents in it:
Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
# Forward apache
config.vm.forward_port 80, 8080
end
When an OS is installed, it typically sets up the MAC address associated
with the eth0 network interface, which allows the VM to connect to the
internet. But when importing a base, VirtualBox changes the MAC address
to something new, which breaks eth0. The MAC address of the base must
be persisted in the box Vagrantfile so that Vagrant can setup the MAC address
to ensure internet connectivity.
Run the following code to package the environment up:
$ vagrant package --vagrantfile Vagrantfile.pkg
vagrant package takes the virtual environment from the current project and packages it into a package.box file in the same directory. The --vagrantfile option tells vagrant package to include the port forwarding lines in Vagrantfile.pkg inside the box, so that VMs created using the box will automatically have port forwarding configured for them, without the user having to edit their VM’s Vagrantfile (Boxes have their own Vagrantfile – for more details on how this works, see the documentation for Vagrantfiles).
Vagrant currently supports installing boxes from local file path or from HTTP. If the box you’re distributing has private data on it (such as a company’s web application or client work for freelancers), then you should keep the box on a secure filesystem where the public cannot access it.
If the box you’re distributing is meant to be public, HTTP is the best resource to upload to, so that anyone can easily download it.
Once the box is in place, other developers can add it and use it just like any other box. The example below is from the point of view of a new developer on your team using your newly packaged box:
$ vagrant box add my_box /path/to/the/package.box
$ vagrant init my_box
$ vagrant up
At this point, they should have a fully functional environment which exactly mirrors the environment set up in previous steps of the guide. Notice that they didn’t have to do do provisioning, or set up anything on their system (other than Vagrant), etc. Distributing development environments has never been so easy.