DevStructure and Vagrant sitting in a tree...
Richard and I understand that with DevStructure, we're asking customers to make a few leaps. There are new tools to learn in blueprint and sandbox, a webapp for bootstrapping servers and the concept of working in a remote dev environment. We're doing our best to minimize these obstacles and blend into your workflow, but working remotely is a frequent deal-breaker. If you want to code in a replica of your production environment and aren't comfortable with vi, your options are limited. Doubledown, our open-source project for fast file syncing, Dropbox or even SFTP can alleviate some pain, but for many users it's simply too big of a disruption to overcome. And if you're using a service provider, there is the additional cost of a dev server.
Virtualization delivers an obvious solution to this problem and a project that caught our eye was Vagrant. It's an open-source tool for building and running local development environments using VirtualBox. The spirit of Vagrant mirrors many of our beliefs, namely that as developers we should build, write code in and export reusable environments. Vagrant provides a command line wrapper for VirtualBox, enabling you to run a Linux server on your local machine. Your code and the infrastructure behind it run Linux, but you can use your favorite editor to hack in a shared folder. It's the best of both worlds: local speed, local editors, a real development environment, zero costs and no duplication since you can reuse all of your work in production.
Today we're pleased to announce DevStructure Boxes for Vagrant. That means you can build, code in and configure a local Linux server, then use our tools to export your work as a blueprint. Once blueprinted, it's ready for deployment using Puppet or Chef. Vagrant servers are free to use on your DevStructure account. We're anxious to get your feedback and hope this integrates into your coding rituals. Let us know what you think!
