---
title: Easy deployment with Vagrant
date:  2017-12-05
tags:  tutorial
tldr:  Quite irritated I wasn't doing this already
---

> Vagrant[1] provides easy to configure, reproducible, and portable work
> environments built on top of industry-standard technology and controlled by
> a single consistent workflow to help maximize the productivity and
> flexibility of you and your team.

This is fine and dandy but, I'm not on a team with my side projects. I just
want to quickly push my code to a server and keep it moving. Here's how I
did it.



## Installation
Head on over to HashiCorp's download page for Vagrant[2] and select the build
for your OS flavor of choice. After the installation is complete, open a
Terminal and type `vagrant -v` to ensure installation was successful. If you
see a version number, you're good to go.



## Setup
`cd` into the folder you want to deploy and initialize a Vagrant deployment
script with `vagrant init`. This will automatically generate a `Vagrantfile`
and it is in here that you'll customize your deployment strategies. Here[3]
are all the parameters you can use for SFTP (which is the way I'm deploying
my projects). There's documentation for Heroku and inline scripts as well.
Here's my deployment script for `thewebb.blog`:

```ruby
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "base"

  config.push.define "ftp" do |push|
    push.host = "thewebb.blog"
    push.username = "root"
    push.password = "~/.ssh/id_rsa"
    push.secure = true
    push.destination = "/var/www/twb"
    push.exclude = ".DS_Store"
    push.exclude = ".git"
    push.exclude = ".gitignore"
    push.exclude = ".sass-cache"
    push.exclude = "[documents]"
    push.exclude = "node_modules"
    push.exclude = "package-lock.json"
    push.exclude = "Vagrantfile"
  end
end
```

You can probably guess what's going on here, but I'll walk you through it
anyway.

I'm connected to `thewebb.blog` via secure FTP, or SFTP, with an SSH key
(because passwords are lame). The directory I want to push data to on
`thewebb.blog` has a path of `/var/www/twb`. There are a couple of files and
folders I don't want/need on my server (mostly the contents of my
`.gitignore`, along with that file itself).

Please refer to the documentation[4] for in-depth descriptions about other
parameters like `config.vm.box` (this line is required btw).



## Takeoff
I use Node.js for practically everything I do so I added a nifty deploy
command to my `package.json`. Here's the relevant bit:

```json
{
  "scripts": {
    "deploy": "vagrant push"
  }
}
```

And that's it!

To be quite honest, me using Vagrant feels like the equivalent of buying an
iMac Pro to browse the Internet but, their tagline is "Deployment environments
made easy". And guess what? It works *damn good*. What's easier than
`npm run deploy`?



## One more thing
When you deploy your project, you'll see a message in Terminal stating what's
happening, but nothing else. It would be *nice* to have a progress bar to
indicate…well, progress but it doesn't take too long (for my projects). Also,
automatic reading of my `.gitignore` file so I don't have to manually include
what I want excluded.

Another thing that would be nice is something where my server could detect
changes and run commands. For example, let's say I add new modules to this
blog. I'll have to install them on my server as well. Currently, I have to SSH
into it and run whatever extra steps to ensure updates and I *reeeeeally*
don't feel like doing that. You could argue that I could just use HashiCorp's
other tools like Nomad and Consul but 1) it was too confusing to set up and I
realized 2) those tools are *definitely* overkill for what I work on.

SO! I have caused myself *much* pain to create a system that allows these
automatic updates to happen. Just deploy and your server will take care of the
rest. During my failed attempts at utilizing other tools, I was inspired by
the ease with which I deployed with Vagrant via a simple file. It's still in
development but I've been working on it for the past day and a half. Great
progress has been made, stay tuned! 🕸



---

[1]: https://www.vagrantup.com
[2]: https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
[3]: https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/push/ftp.html
[4]: https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/index.html