A few years ago, I checked off an item on my Open Source Bucket List when I pitched—and ultimately contributed—a brand new feature to HashiCorp’s : command aliases. While aliases have been a core Vagrant feature for some time, there hasn’t been a lot of coverage about what they are, and why they really matter. Vagrant An expansion on the concept of shell-based aliases, user-configurable aliases within Vagrant provide a more contextual outlet for tuning Vagrant in a way that isn’t operating system or shell dependent. Personally, I use Vagrant on both Windows and macOS machines, and while Vagrant is cross-platform, my command line aliases are not. Who Cares? Originally inspired by Git’s own , aliases make your Vagrant experience simpler, easier, and more familiar by allowing you to create your own custom Vagrant commands. In a world where software developers tune and configure their environments for optimum productivity, aliases allow us to abstract away the nuances of a given tool in favor of our own preferred usability patterns. alias functionality Take, for example, a common workflow that I tend to follow: completely burning a running Vagrant box to the ground. Generally, this involves executing a followed by removing the directory from the project. Instead of running both of these commands every time, I can instead create an alias called that does all that sweet, sweet destruction on my behalf. vagrant destroy .vagrant vagrant eradicate But How? Defined using a standard format, Vagrant aliases work the same way as Git aliases. By adding these aliases to the Vagrant alias file (which can be found either at or in a custom file defined using the environment variable), you can start crafting your own aliases almost immediately. key = value VAGRANT_HOME/aliases VAGRANT_ALIAS_FILE Let’s say that we want to implement the command example from above. This can be done by dropping the following line into your Vagrant aliases file: vagrant eradicate = !vagrant destroy && rm -rf .vagrant eradicate Internal Aliases Internal command aliases call Vagrant’s class directly. This allows you to alias one Vagrant command to another Vagrant command. This technique can be very useful for creating simple commands that you think should exist. For example, if feels more intuitive than , the following alias definitions would make that change possible: CLI vagrant stop vagrant halt = halt stop Or, maybe you want to be able to force halt a running Vagrant box. Adding parameters and options to the alias can be done as well: = halt -f stop This would make the following commands functionally equivalent: vagrant stop
vagrant halt -f External Aliases While internal aliases can be used to define more intuitive Vagrant commands, external command aliases are used to define Vagrant commands with brand new functionality. Similarly to Git aliases, these aliases are prefixed with the character, which tells the command interpreter that the alias should be executed as a shell command. ! As an example, let’s say that you want to be able to view the processor and memory utilization of the active project’s running Vagrant box. To do this, you could define a vagrant stats command that returns the required information in an easy-to-read format, like so: stats = !ps aux | | $(cat .vagrant d) | awk grep "[V]BoxHeadless" grep /machines/ default /virtualbox/i '{ printf("CPU: %.02f%%, Memory: %.02f%%", $3, $4) }' The above alias, from within the context of an active Vagrant project, would print the CPU and memory utilization of the running box directly to the console: CPU: %, Memory: % 4.20 11.00 What Else? What started out as a small idea turned into one that solved a very real pain point for me personally, and it’s one that has benefited me for years now. These are just a few examples of the types of aliases you can create in Vagrant, but what are some other examples you can think of (or are currently using)? Previously published at https://flower.codes/2020/05/15/introduction-to-vagrant-aliases.html

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How To Create Aliases In Vagrant

How To Create Aliases In Vagrant

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