Vagrant is a set of tools neatly packed up into a single vagrant command to manage virtual machines run by VirtualBox. Those vagrant boxes are run in headless mode. The administration is done connecting via ssh to a command line. Vagrant operates by using base boxes that provide a starting point for further specialization. Hence, vagrant boxes are often used to test out applications and their deployments. They are useful as controlled environments that can be set up quickly to test out and discuss about a project. It is also a great educational tool.
Building Vagrant base boxes is not trivial. If you get them wrong they might not work, but worse, in headless mode you may not get enough feedback to analyse the problem easily. The Vagrant project therefore recommends you use one of their boxes as the start.
Building your own boxes has the advantage to be able to customize them to your exact needs. You can choose a distribution and a specific release that you want and you can make it very compact by only including the software that you need.
To make building Vagrant boxes practical we chose to automate most of the steps. This allows us to build the boxes reliably and to fix problems we encounter along the way once and for all. This repository serves as a collection of the tools we need for the automation.
If you are in a hurry and you just want to see what is possible you can check out one of our base boxes:
vagrant box add precise64-core http://www.phys.ethz.ch/~isg/vagrant/precise64-core.box
This box is only 130 MB in size at the time of writing and contains only the core components necessary for a Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (precise) installation. Be aware that this box lacks puppet and chef. It can therefore serve as a basis for projects that do not rely on those packages. You can also use it to install exactly the version of puppet and chef that you want (Ubuntu package vs. RVM vs. rbenv). Customizing an existing box is much easier than starting from scratch.
If you disagree with our choice of software be aware that the true value of a project like this one are the tools in the form of scripts that you can use to build your own. The example box mentioned above is more than anything else a showcase to hint at what is possible and to spur your initiative. If you are just starting with Vagrant it is better that you use one of their boxes. That way all their explanations work as intended. Once you know your way around you are invited to come back here and customize your boxes to your heart's content.
See the HOWTO for some step-by-step instructions.
This project started out as one person's itch that got scratched. The main focus is to build boxes with a minimal footprint and reproducibility of builds. End-to-end automation is a secondary concern.
There must be quite a number of people who build their own boxes but few seem to publish their experiences. There are however some projects and on github you will see a few forks there. You should definitely check out VeeWee. They support complete automation and have templates for a large number of configurations.
Building Vagrant boxes just invites diversity. Look around and feel free to fork the project.
Yours, -- Elmar Heeb