7 ms·

I'm here to answer any questions, if you have them. I'm really excited! Fun fact, I first "launched" Vagrant on HN almost exactly 1000 days ago: http://news.yc

I'm here to answer any questions, if you have them. I'm really excited! Fun fact, I first "launched" Vagrant on HN almost exactly 1000 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1175901 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1175901

gerad 14y ago
What's Vagrant?
- dboat 14y ago
  vagrant is a tool for automatically setting up ("provisioning") new vms, according to scripts. For instance, once you have scripts that download and compile apache, php, python, and perhaps mysql and postgres, you can automatically create a new virtual machine with any combination of those things at any time. Even your applications can be automatically installed in a fresh development environment with a single command. It's great for allowing new developers to get going in their own environment on a team project, and good for you individually, if you have a lot of different things on the go, you can keep them isolated in their own environments and easily setup and destroy them at any time. The value is adds is great, although it also adds a bit of inconvenience. If your OS likes to update virtualbox a lot, vagrant might suddenly stop working until they update it. Developing the scripts to provision a vm can take quite a bit of time. If you're doing lengthy compiles in the process and those compiles are failing, it can be slow to find out why. Once you get a module down, and it's solid, it's very nice to have.
  - varikin 14y ago
    The place it shines is setting up a complex dev environment and snapshotting that. Then share the snapshot to other developers. They then do something like "vagrant init complex-env", "vagrant up", "vagrant ssh" and they are working in the environment without worrying about Postgres or Apache or Java or anything like that when they just need to work on CSS and HTML.
stukpixel1 14y ago
Vagrant was amazingly helpful for my dev work this summer. Good to hear that you're making its development a priority. I suppose my only question is if you plan on redesigning the Vagrant Docs website to be more like your attractive company landing page.
- mitchellh 14y ago
  The Vagrant website and the docs website is being completely re-designed by the same designer. It is going to look _very_ attractive. :)
  - dmackerman 14y ago
    Sorry, but that logo is so...1998.
    - nirvana 14y ago
      That's what I love about it. It is a very classic logo. It evokes for me the idea that it was designed for a high tech company in a sci-fi film. Like Cyberdyne Systems or TYRELL Corp.
      - semanticist 14y ago
        I was instantly reminded of the OCP - Omni Consumer Products - logo from Robocop, and yes, I also like the slightly retro-future feel. As much as it's entirely irrelevant to Vagrant-as-a-tool itself, I'd love to see a whole 'brand identity' in the same theme. It's a small thing, but it makes me slightly happier when the tools I use have a little bit of character to them. (See also: Github & Octocats)
LeafStorm 14y ago
Will it be possible to run development VMs in VirtualBox and production VMs in vSphere with the same Vagrantfile?
- mitchellh 14y ago
  Yep.
  - LeafStorm 14y ago
    Cool. I was considering using Vagrant for my current project at work, but our production VM infrastructure is on vSphere. Fortunately, we don't need to spin up new servers very often, so I just wrote a shell script to set everything up. It would be nice to use something a bit more battle-tested.
    - adient 14y ago
      Puppet, chef, cfengine, etc...
blhack 14y ago
http://vagrantup.com/ http://vagrantup.com/ A bit of constructive criticism: The "this changes everything" thing has become way, way, overplayed. I saw that and immediately rolled my eyes and stopped reading. It is about at the level of "code ninja" now.
- mitchellh 14y ago
  Thanks, I agree that I'm tired of that. The Vagrant website is being redesigned at the moment, so that'll disappear shortly.
  - igorgue 14y ago
    But, and take this as a compliment, Vagrant does change everything. I'm so happy with vagrant now I can really say I have the same OS as my server in my laptop, I can easily switch between them and distribute the env between my peers.
    - varikin 14y ago
      I agree, vagrant changes everything. At the moment, it is feasible for what we at work, yet. But I really want to use it more.
  - RDDavies 14y ago
    As an avid supporter of the project, shoot an email if you want a Web dev to build it out for you :).
- typicalrunt 14y ago
  You'd be surprised how many Enterprise companies are discovering Vagrant for the first time. "You can have the same environment shared by everyone, and still look like Dev/QA/Production?" they ask. It's amazing how far behind some companies are on the tech curve.
  - petercooper 14y ago
    This isn't just a problem of a tech curve or conservatism but one of exposure and marketing. There are a lot of great tools and systems out there that are pretty in your face and obvious to use in certain niches yet.. you'll still run across good folks who are new to them. Always plenty of room to expand! (And that's a good thing ;-))
lyaunzbe 14y ago
Congratulations Mitchell! I have always admired your work and it is inspiring to see an such an evolution in your project. Kudos to whoever designed the site, it looks amazing!
rbolkey 14y ago
Congratulations as well! I've been using Vagrant mainly as a testing platform for authoring Puppet modules, and it's been wonderful.
joedevon 14y ago
Congrats! I'll hit you up about potentially setting up a training in Los Angeles.
aashay 14y ago
Maybe this is a stupid question, but how do you pronounce HashiCorp? Is it "HAA-she" (rhymes with Kashi, like the cereal) or is it "HASH-i" (rhymes with "flashy")? I'm guessing it's the former since it'd match the Japanese pronunciation of your last name...?
- mitchellh 14y ago
  Rhymes with Kashi. ^_^
  - recursive 14y ago
    I'm outing myself as a philistine here, but how do you pronounce Kashi, if it doesn't rhyme with flashy?
    - yusefnapora 14y ago
      I think it rhymes with 'squashy' or 'washy'.
      - aashay 14y ago
        Heh I probably should've gone with squashy or washy, but whenever I try to pick a rhyming word, I take the suffix syllable and prepend every letter in the alphabet until I come up with a word (aashi, bashi, cashi...). Kashi won... :\
- sparkie 14y ago
  The "ha" sound is like in hash, but it's a distinct syllable on it's own, without the "sh". The second syllable is more like "she". The "ha" and "shi" have the same weight, so the whole word is 2 syllables and 2 morae, unlike either of the two examples you gave (which are 3 morae each.) It usually means "bridge" (橋) in the name Hashimoto, but can also mean "chopsticks" (箸) or "edge" (端), with a slightly different pitch (largely indistinguishable for non-speakers)
- rhizome 14y ago
dfischer 14y ago
Grats man. Happy for you.
nigelk 14y ago
Great news Mitch! Congratulations, and give us a yell if I can help with anything.
ramereth 14y ago
Congrats on launching your new company! Best of luck!
peralta 14y ago
First of all: congrats! I have been using Vagrant for a while now and it's how we manage the development and test environments (+200) in the company I work at (tuenti.com). It is still not clear to me what the business model will be: will you be charging for selling extra providers (like VMWare Fusion), support contracts or ...?

gerad 14y ago

What's Vagrant?

dboat 14y ago
vagrant is a tool for automatically setting up ("provisioning") new vms, according to scripts. For instance, once you have scripts that download and compile apache, php, python, and perhaps mysql and postgres, you can automatically create a new virtual machine with any combination of those things at any time. Even your applications can be automatically installed in a fresh development environment with a single command. It's great for allowing new developers to get going in their own environment on a team project, and good for you individually, if you have a lot of different things on the go, you can keep them isolated in their own environments and easily setup and destroy them at any time. The value is adds is great, although it also adds a bit of inconvenience. If your OS likes to update virtualbox a lot, vagrant might suddenly stop working until they update it. Developing the scripts to provision a vm can take quite a bit of time. If you're doing lengthy compiles in the process and those compiles are failing, it can be slow to find out why. Once you get a module down, and it's solid, it's very nice to have.
- varikin 14y ago
  The place it shines is setting up a complex dev environment and snapshotting that. Then share the snapshot to other developers. They then do something like "vagrant init complex-env", "vagrant up", "vagrant ssh" and they are working in the environment without worrying about Postgres or Apache or Java or anything like that when they just need to work on CSS and HTML.

stukpixel1 14y ago

Vagrant was amazingly helpful for my dev work this summer. Good to hear that you're making its development a priority. I suppose my only question is if you plan on redesigning the Vagrant Docs website to be more like your attractive company landing page.

mitchellh 14y ago
The Vagrant website and the docs website is being completely re-designed by the same designer. It is going to look _very_ attractive. :)
- dmackerman 14y ago
  Sorry, but that logo is so...1998.
  - nirvana 14y ago
    That's what I love about it. It is a very classic logo. It evokes for me the idea that it was designed for a high tech company in a sci-fi film. Like Cyberdyne Systems or TYRELL Corp.
    - semanticist 14y ago
      I was instantly reminded of the OCP - Omni Consumer Products - logo from Robocop, and yes, I also like the slightly retro-future feel. As much as it's entirely irrelevant to Vagrant-as-a-tool itself, I'd love to see a whole 'brand identity' in the same theme. It's a small thing, but it makes me slightly happier when the tools I use have a little bit of character to them. (See also: Github & Octocats)

LeafStorm 14y ago

Will it be possible to run development VMs in VirtualBox and production VMs in vSphere with the same Vagrantfile?

mitchellh 14y ago
Yep.
- LeafStorm 14y ago
  Cool. I was considering using Vagrant for my current project at work, but our production VM infrastructure is on vSphere. Fortunately, we don't need to spin up new servers very often, so I just wrote a shell script to set everything up. It would be nice to use something a bit more battle-tested.
  - adient 14y ago
    Puppet, chef, cfengine, etc...

blhack 14y ago

http://vagrantup.com/ http://vagrantup.com/ A bit of constructive criticism: The "this changes everything" thing has become way, way, overplayed. I saw that and immediately rolled my eyes and stopped reading. It is about at the level of "code ninja" now.

mitchellh 14y ago
Thanks, I agree that I'm tired of that. The Vagrant website is being redesigned at the moment, so that'll disappear shortly.
- igorgue 14y ago
  But, and take this as a compliment, Vagrant does change everything. I'm so happy with vagrant now I can really say I have the same OS as my server in my laptop, I can easily switch between them and distribute the env between my peers.
  - varikin 14y ago
    I agree, vagrant changes everything. At the moment, it is feasible for what we at work, yet. But I really want to use it more.
- RDDavies 14y ago
  As an avid supporter of the project, shoot an email if you want a Web dev to build it out for you :).
typicalrunt 14y ago
You'd be surprised how many Enterprise companies are discovering Vagrant for the first time. "You can have the same environment shared by everyone, and still look like Dev/QA/Production?" they ask. It's amazing how far behind some companies are on the tech curve.
- petercooper 14y ago
  This isn't just a problem of a tech curve or conservatism but one of exposure and marketing. There are a lot of great tools and systems out there that are pretty in your face and obvious to use in certain niches yet.. you'll still run across good folks who are new to them. Always plenty of room to expand! (And that's a good thing ;-))

lyaunzbe 14y ago

Congratulations Mitchell! I have always admired your work and it is inspiring to see an such an evolution in your project. Kudos to whoever designed the site, it looks amazing!

rbolkey 14y ago

Congratulations as well! I've been using Vagrant mainly as a testing platform for authoring Puppet modules, and it's been wonderful.

joedevon 14y ago

Congrats! I'll hit you up about potentially setting up a training in Los Angeles.

aashay 14y ago

Maybe this is a stupid question, but how do you pronounce HashiCorp? Is it "HAA-she" (rhymes with Kashi, like the cereal) or is it "HASH-i" (rhymes with "flashy")? I'm guessing it's the former since it'd match the Japanese pronunciation of your last name...?

mitchellh 14y ago
Rhymes with Kashi. ^_^
- recursive 14y ago
  I'm outing myself as a philistine here, but how do you pronounce Kashi, if it doesn't rhyme with flashy?
  - yusefnapora 14y ago
    I think it rhymes with 'squashy' or 'washy'.
    - aashay 14y ago
      Heh I probably should've gone with squashy or washy, but whenever I try to pick a rhyming word, I take the suffix syllable and prepend every letter in the alphabet until I come up with a word (aashi, bashi, cashi...). Kashi won... :\
sparkie 14y ago
The "ha" sound is like in hash, but it's a distinct syllable on it's own, without the "sh". The second syllable is more like "she". The "ha" and "shi" have the same weight, so the whole word is 2 syllables and 2 morae, unlike either of the two examples you gave (which are 3 morae each.) It usually means "bridge" (橋) in the name Hashimoto, but can also mean "chopsticks" (箸) or "edge" (端), with a slightly different pitch (largely indistinguishable for non-speakers)
rhizome 14y ago

dfischer 14y ago

Grats man. Happy for you.

nigelk 14y ago

Great news Mitch! Congratulations, and give us a yell if I can help with anything.

ramereth 14y ago

Congrats on launching your new company! Best of luck!

peralta 14y ago

First of all: congrats! I have been using Vagrant for a while now and it's how we manage the development and test environments (+200) in the company I work at (tuenti.com). It is still not clear to me what the business model will be: will you be charging for selling extra providers (like VMWare Fusion), support contracts or ...?