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Pre-Install Vagrant and VirtualBox on Build Workers

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ukio

30 Dec, 2014 01:30 PM

Vagrant + VirtualBox are a sweet combination for testing infrastructure on Windows (and other platforms too).

Here are some initial tests which download and install Vagrant / Virtualbox and then bring up an Ubuntu VM:

• on azure: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/tknerr/vagrant-appveyor-testing/his...
• on hyperv: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/ukio/vagrant-appveyor-testing/history

On azure it takes about 8-12 minutes for downloading and installing vagrant + virtualbox. On hyperv it's much faster (2-4 minutes) but still takes some precious build time.

In addition to installing vagrant + virtualbox the time for bringing up a VM varies between 4 (hyperv) and up to 15 (azure) minutes.

It would be super useful if Vagrant and VirtualBox were already preinstalled, especially on azure where this alone takes ~10 minutes.

From my experience:

• VirtualBox can be installed only once as it writes registry entries and creates additional network adapters, which is OK because usually you update it very rarely
• Vagrant can coexist in multiple installations / directories, you just have to add its bin directory to the path (same pattern as with the different Ruby runtimes). This would allow for switching between different vagrant versions (e.g. latest from 1.6 line vs. latest from 1.7 line)

To my knowledge AppVeyor would be the very first platform that enables infrastructure and cookbook testing that this is free for OSS! (with the performance penalty though, which would be a good chance for getting new paying customers too)

What do you think?

1. 1 Posted by ukio on 12 Jan, 2015 10:56 PM

   

   Hi Feodor, any comments on this so far?

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2. Support Staff 2 Posted by Feodor Fitsner on 12 Jan, 2015 10:58 PM

   

   Well, I think we could give it a try on a test image. Though I can't give any ETA.

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3. 3 Posted by ukio on 28 Jun, 2015 09:43 PM

   

   Hi Feodor,

   I heard about the new everything Hyper-V and SSD infrastructure, and wanted to give it a try again.

   Is there any way how I could tell that my account is on the new infrastructure already?

   Cheers, Torben

   EDIT:
   P.S: actually, this is my real account for private FOSS projects: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/tknerr
   I was using https://ci.appveyor.com/project/ukio/ only for testing the Hyper-V stuff when it came out (somehow it was not possible to change the above account back then...)

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4. Support Staff 4 Posted by Feodor Fitsner on 29 Jun, 2015 04:52 AM

   

   Both accounts have been moved to a new environment. Let me know how it goes.

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5. 5 Posted by ukio on 29 Jun, 2015 06:35 AM

   

   Hey Feodor, the instantaneous builds are AWESOME!

   I missed that so much and fell 1000% more productive right now. To be earnest, I already discarded appveyor as "not usable in free tier", but gladfully I still read the newsletters and gave it a try again :-)

   I'll check further and see how builds are going, and if there is still a need for preinstalled vagrant / virtualbox or if it's fast enough with the new environment

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6. Support Staff 6 Posted by Feodor Fitsner on 29 Jun, 2015 06:38 AM

   

   Glad you like new speeds :)

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7. Ilya Finkelshteyn closed this discussion on 25 Aug, 2018 01:57 AM.