2.5 Setup Files for the Course

Having installed the host tools, we now need to set up a virtual machine on which we will do all of the work for this course. This approach removes many problems relating to you and I working in different environments. For example, some of you will have host computers running Microsoft Windows, others will be running MacOS, and others Linux. In addition you will all be running different versions and have different tools installed. By standardising on one environment and one set of tools we remove these differences at the cost of (perhaps) causing some issues with you not having favourite tools available.

To create the virtual class machine:

1mkdir pfs 
2cd pfs 
3clone --depth 1 https://gitlab.com/saltyvagrant.classes/programming course-material 
4cp -rf course-material/pfs010cp001 classroom 
5cd classroom 
6vagrant up

The vagrant up may take a while (several minutes even on a powerful machine) as it sets up the class machine for the first time. (The good news is that this long wait is only necessary when setting up the class virtual machine. Once set up the machine will be much quicker to start.)

Once you are returned to your command prompt you can connect to the class machine using:

1vagrant ssh

Assuming all is well you will be connected to the new virtual machine and everything will be set up ready to start the course.