Engineering your personal Development Environment using Vagrant
5 min readOct 1, 2020
Development Environments are like your favorite T-Shirt, you use it as often as you want but no matter how well you maintain/wash it, sooner or later must toss it and replace it with something new.
In this article, I will demonstrate to you how to set up a personal development VM including the installation of all required tools to perform day to day integration software development tasks. The process is fully automated and repeatable.
We are going to use Vagrant and VirtualBox. We will use Ubuntu LTS 18.04. This will ensure that we will get security patches until 2028.
Vagrant File:
The Vagrant file is used to automate the setup, here we will set up VSCode, Postman, PlantUML, and so on. It is basically the part which you previously did manually (Installing all the programs you need & configure them to your liking).
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
config.vm.box = "ubuntu/bionic64"
config.vm.hostname = "ubuntu-dev"
config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|
v.name = "ubuntu-dev"
v.gui = true
v.memory = 12288
v.cpus = 12
end
puts "Enter the username you would like to use: "
user = STDIN.gets.chomp
config.vm.provision "file", source: "eclipse.desktop", destination: "/tmp/eclipse.desktop"
config.vm.provision "file", source: "soapui.desktop", destination: "/tmp/soapui.desktop"
config.vm.provision "file", source: "plantuml.desktop", destination: "/tmp/plantuml.desktop"
config.vm.provision "file", source: "keyboard", destination: "/tmp/keyboard"
config.vm.provision "file", source: "i3-config", destination: "/tmp/i3-config"
config.vm.provision "file", source: "gtk.css", destination: "/tmp/gtk.css"
config.vm.provision "file", source: "gtk-settings.ini", destination: "/tmp/gtk-settings.ini"
config.vm.provision "file", source: "setupMenu.sh", destination: "/tmp/setupMenu.sh"
config.vm.provision "file", source: "startSoapUI.sh", destination: "/tmp/startSoapUI.sh"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: <<-SHELL
#: '
apt -y update
apt -y upgrade
apt -y install snapd
apt -y install vim
snap install postman
snap install gimp
mkdir /opt/tmp
#'
cp /tmp/eclipse.desktop /opt/tmp/eclipse.desktop
cp /tmp/soapui.desktop /opt/tmp/soapui.desktop
cp /tmp/plantuml.desktop /opt/tmp/plantuml.desktop
cp /tmp/keyboard /etc/default/keyboard
cp /tmp/startSoapUI.sh /opt/startSoapUI.sh
cp /tmp/i3-config /opt/i3-config
cp /tmp/gtk.css /opt/gtk.css
cp /tmp/gtk-settings.ini /opt/gtk-settings.ini
#: '
#FIXME: Execute on Login.
cp /tmp/setupMenu.sh /opt/resetMenu.sh
# Install Gnome Desktop
apt -y install ubuntu-desktop
# Install VMWare Guest Addons
apt-get -y install virtualbox-guest-additions-iso virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-x11
# Install Java OpenJDK 11
cd /opt
wget https://github.com/AdoptOpenJDK/openjdk11-binaries/releases/download/jdk-11.0.4%2B11/OpenJDK11U-jdk_x64_linux_hotspot_11.0.4_11.tar.gz
tar -xvzf /opt/OpenJDK11U-jdk_x64_linux_hotspot_11.0.4_11.tar.gz
wget https://github.com/AdoptOpenJDK/openjdk8-binaries/releases/download/jdk8u222-b10/OpenJDK8U-jdk_x64_linux_hotspot_8u222b10.tar.gz
tar -xvzf /opt/OpenJDK8U-jdk_x64_linux_hotspot_8u222b10.tar.gz
# Install Eclipse
wget http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/eclipse/technology/epp/downloads/release/2019-09/M1/eclipse-jee-2019-09-M1-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz
tar xfz eclipse-jee-2019-09-M1-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz
cp /opt/tmp/eclipse.desktop /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop
# Install Maven
sudo apt-get -y install maven
# Shell
sudo apt-get -y install screenfetch
rm /usr/share/applications/ubuntu-amazon-default.desktop
# Install SOAP UI
cd /opt/
wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.eviware/soapuios/5.5.0/SoapUI-5.5.0-linux-bin.tar.gz
tar xfz SoapUI-5.5.0-linux-bin.tar.gz
cp /opt/tmp/soapui.desktop /usr/share/applications/soapui.desktop
# Install Docker
apt -y install docker.io
docker run -d -p 8080:8080 plantuml/plantuml-server:tomcat
cp /opt/tmp/plantuml.desktop /usr/share/applications/plantuml.desktop
# VSCode
apt -y install software-properties-common apt-transport-https wget
wget -q https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
add-apt-repository -y "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable main"
apt -y install code
# - Install i3
apt -y install i3
sudo apt-get install nitrogen
cd /tmp
wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.0.14/VBoxGuestAdditions_6.0.14.iso
sudo apt-get install p7zip-full
7z x VBoxGuestAdditions_6.0.14.iso
chmod +x VBoxLInuxAdditions.run
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/yshui/picom
cd picom
sudo apt-get install -y meson ninja-build libjson-c-dev libev-dev libxext-dev libxcb1-dev libxcb-damage0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-render-util0-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-randr0-dev libxcb-composite0-dev libxcb-image0-dev libxcb-present-dev libxcb-xinerama0-dev libpixman-1-dev libdbus-1-dev libconfig-dev libxdg-basedir-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libpcre2-dev libevdev-dev uthash-dev libev-dev
sudo apt-get install -y gcc-8 pkg-config
sudo apt-get install -y libx11-xcb-dev xcb libxcb-image0 libxcb-image0-dev libpixman-1-dev libxcb-sync-dev libxcb-composite0-dev libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-xinerama0-dev libxcb-present-dev uthash-dev libconfig-dev libxdg-basedir-dev libpcre++-dev
sudo apt-get install -y freeglut3 freeglut3-dev libdbus-1-dev
sudo ninja -C build install
sudo apt-get install -y g++-8
#'
#sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-8 800 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-8
#meson --buildtype=release . build
#i3-gaps
sudo apt install -y libxcb1-dev libxcb-keysyms1-dev libpango1.0-dev libxcb-util0-dev libxcb-icccm4-dev libyajl-dev libstartup-notification0-dev libxcb-randr0-dev libev-dev libxcb-cursor-dev libxcb-xinerama0-dev libxcb-xkb-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev autoconf libxcb-xrm0 libxcb-xrm-dev automake
cd /opt
git clone https://www.github.com/Airblader/i3 i3-gaps
cd i3-gaps
autoreconf --force --install
rm -rf build/
mkdir -p build && cd build/
../configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --disable-sanitizers
make
sudo make install
#Theme
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:system76/pop
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install pop-theme
# Todos:
# - Setup Example projects
# - Setup Editors w/ Auto complete & Syntax Highlighting
# - Some Dotfiles Setup (incl. VIM & ls-alias)
# - Tweak VM FS Size
SHELL
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "adduser #{user}"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "passwd -d -u #{user}"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "chage -d0 #{user}"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "usermod -aG sudo #{user}"
# Dotfiles
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "mkdir -p /home/#{user}/.config/i3"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "cp /opt/i3-config /home/#{user}/.config/i3/config"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "mkdir -p /home/#{user}/.config/gtk-3.0/"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "cp /opt/gtk.css /home/#{user}/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "cp /opt/gtk-settings.ini /home/#{user}/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/ultrabug/37614f696cc7e4ca027f/raw/1c41f0c0a61e807df3afdef0e463949133c64659/i3status.conf -P /home/#{user}/"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "mv /home/#{user}/i3status.conf /home/#{user}/.i3status.conf"
# Default JDK is 8
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "echo 'export PATH=/opt/jdk-11.0.4+11/bin:\$PATH' >> /home/#{user}/.bashrc"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "echo 'export PATH=/opt/eclipse:\$PATH' >> /home/#{user}/.bashrc"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "echo 'screenfetch' >> /home/#{user}/.bashrc"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "echo 'setxkbmap ch' >> /home/#{user}/.bashrc"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "echo 'set PATH=$PATH:/opt/i3-gaps/build' >> /home/#{user}/.bashrc"
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "chown -R #{user}:#{user} /opt/*"
# remove vagrant user
config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "reboot"
endKeyboard Config
As you can see in the vagrant script, the keyboard layout is defined in a separate keyboard file. This configuration is not required if you are using the standard American English keyboard.
XKBMODEL="pc105
XKBLAYOUT="de_CH"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS=""BACKSPACE="guess"
The full git repository is available on github: https://github.com/aymenfurter/ubuntu-dev-vagrant
