Vagrant Sync Folders

Projects: c2platform/rws/ansible-gis

Create a local and hidden file named .sync_folders.yml to efficiently synchronize a folder from your host machine to the guest machine.

Problem

During the development process, it is often necessary to make files and folders from your host machine available within a guest machine provisioned using Ansible.

Context

In the context of development, there are scenarios where you need to access files or directories on the host machine within a guest machine. This typically arises when provisioning a guest machine using Ansible.

Solution

Vagrant Synced Folders  enable you to seamlessly work on your project’s files on your host machine while harnessing the guest machine’s resources for compilation or execution.

By default, Vagrant shares the project folder (the directory containing the Vagrantfile). However, you can customize this behavior by modifying the Vagrantfile to sync additional folders based on the configuration defined in a file named .sync_folders.yml. This file is intentionally ignored by Git to prevent accidental inclusion in your version control repository.

Examples and implementation

For a practical demonstration of a modified Vagrantfile that takes advantage of the .sync_folders.yml file, refer to the example in c2platform/rws/ansible-gis This Vagrantfile showcases how you can configure folder synchronization. The .sync_folders.yml file can contain YAML configurations like the following:

---
- src: /software/projects/rws/
  target: /arcgis-software-repo
- src: ../ansible-dev-collections/
  target: /ansible-dev-collections

In this configuration, two folders are synchronized. The first entry in the list makes the ArcGIS Software available inside the guest machine at C:\arcgis-software-repo. On the host machine, this software resides in the /software/projects/rws/ directory.

Additionally, review the group_vars/all/software-repo.yml file, which introduces a project variable called gs_software_repo. This variable is used to configure the location of the software repository, enabling software downloads depending on the environment:

gs_software_repo:
  development_strix: http://192.168.88.5/software
  development: file:///C:/arcgis-software-repo

Additionally, the second entry in the .sync_folders.yml file deals with Ansible Collections that are being modified within the guest OS. It places these collections at the path C:\ansible-dev-collections on MS Windows guests and /ansible-dev-collections on Linux systems. This allows you to use them for Ansible provisioning from within the guest machine. For further details on using Ansible without Vagrant, please refer to Using Ansible without Vagrant.