Webdev:DevBoxVMImages

As part of bug 688911 and bug 688923, we should work on providing downloadable virtual machine images that contain ready-to-run installations of our websites. That way, a new contributor can focus on contributing, rather than learning how to install and configure a website first.

Open questions

• Code on host, or code in VM?
  • Vagrant wants to be used something like this:
    • git clone http://github...
    • vagrant up
  • But would it work better if the source for the project were git clone'ed inside the VM and shipped along with the image?

Participating sites

• AMO?
• SUMO?
• MDN?
  • Need proper hosting
  • http://people.mozilla.org/~lorchard/kuma-master.box
  • http://people.mozilla.org/~lorchard/kuma-mdn-with-import.box

Maintaining VM images

TBD: Need to flesh out a process for most sites that an experienced webdev (eg. project lead or senior dev) follow by hand and/or automate in something like Jenkins.

It might look something like this:

• Use vagrant destroy && vagrant up to spin up a VM in VirtualBox
• Build Puppet manifests to install packages and configure the VM with a running site
• Use vagrant package to extract a {sitename}.box image, once the site is verified to be running.
• Upload the exported {sitename}.box image to hosting site for download.

Hosting VM images

TBD: bug 688923 needs some IT collaboration to acquire hosting infra for 2-20GB VM images.

Hints, tips, HOWTOs

TBD: Collect info and gotchas on setting up sites in VMs.