Front

Speed up your Vagrant workflow

Booting up a fresh virtual machine takes time. Front speeds up VM boot time by preinitializing a pool of VMs. When you need a fresh instance, use front next and you are ready to work instantly. And while you work it rebuilds the old VM for your next refill!

Installation

Install with rubygems:

$ gem install front

Usage

When starting a work session, create a new Vagrantfile for your project. Then create a new pool with create. Without an inventory file, front uses a default Vagrantfile with a Ubuntu precise64 box.

$ front create

As soon as the 1st VM is ready control is returned to you while the other instances in the pool are being preloaded. You can now login to this VM with,

$ front ssh

After you are done with this instance, and need a fresh one, you can fetch it with front next.

$ front next

An inventory file is maintained with the SSH port every time you switch instances. This can be accessed with the inventory action.

$ front inventory

Finally when done, dispose of the pool with the destroy action.

$ front destroy

Implementation

Front clones your project Vagrantfile into a .front directory containing the virtual machine instances. When you access the front commands it steps into these subdirectories and calls the corresponding vagrant command. Most actions run in the background allowing you to continue working while they complete.

Complete Usage

$ front [options] [action]

Actions
  create     : create a new pool
  destroy    : destroy pool
  next       : switch to next instance in pool
  ssh        : ssh to current instance => vagrant ssh
  ssh_config : print ssh config for current instance
  inventory  : print inventory file

Options

-s, --size <size>                Size of instance pool
-V, --version                    Print Front version
-h, --help                       Print Front help

Caveats

• Running multiple VMs requires a fast computer with lots of RAM. The actual amount depends on the number of VMs, and their configuration. Eg:- For a Ubuntu box with 512MB ram with a pool of size 4, you need at least 2GB for Virtual Box. Plus additional RAM for the host system.
• Default pool size is 2.

TODO

• Needs to handle Vagrant errors better.
• Pool size once created should be persistent.
• If an instance isn't ready should be able to show it's status.
• Allow running of other vagrant subcommands

Contributing

• This project uses the gitflow branching model. PR's go against develop.