HashiCorp’s Vagrant makes itself at home in the Cloud with v2.2 release

HashiCorp’s Vagrant makes itself at home in the Cloud with v2.2 release

HashiCorp has added a cloud command line tool to the lastest v2.2 release of Vagrant, smoothing the integration of local installations with the cloud version of the project for building and distributing development environments.

In earlier versions, interaction with the Vagrant Cloud was only possible via the browser or HTTP. Once updated however, command line users have a new cloud command available to them, which should help to manage cloud related matters such as authorisation and lifecycle operations.

An example of the latter is the publication of new boxes on Vagrant Cloud: in this scenario calling cloud publish will lead the user through the process of creating and uploading a box entry and confirm details before making it available. A search subcommand with a variety of filters can help in finding boxes for specific jobs.

Another new command comes in the shape of upload, which gives users the option of uploading files or directories from the host unto a running guest. Those working with large directories might be happy to read that the command also supports steps for the compression of content on the host and automatic decompression on the guest and ways to reduce the number of uploaded items.

Windows support and handling plugins

To make Windows users feel more included, Vagrant 2.2 is the first version to contain a command winrm for executing guest commands via the Windows Remote Management WinRM. The corresponding configuration can be provided with the specially added winrm-config.

If a project requires specific plugins, these can now be defined as strings, arrays and hashes – which support setting a few more options – in the vagrantfile. That way Vagrant will be able to attempt to automatical instal them in a local project if they aren’t already available.

Smaller improvements in the current version include a configuration option which lets Vagrant ignore vagrantfiles inside a box, and an abort option for core triggers. The complete list can be found on GitHub.

Vagrant is meant to help users building and distributing development environments. It’s open source and protected under the MIT License. Commercial support is purchasable via maintainer HashiCorp with pricing available on request.