Developing on Windows -> Deploying on a Virtual Machine?

Question

Is there an easy way to integrate with VirtualBox such that I could develop under the host, Windows, and deploy and run scripts via a mounted folder in a guest linux system?

I'm looking to develop for Linux under Windows, kind of.

Answer 1

You can use VirtualBox's Shared Folders feature to enable your Ubuntu virtual machine to mount a directory of your Windows host. However, you're likey to be deal with some impedance mismatches like different line endings. I hope that is the least of your worries.

Answer 2

You might want to check out vagrant http://vagrantup.com/

It provides a nice and easy system to create a VM from a template in Virtual Box, and will automatically mount the project folder in the guest VM. The config can also easily be included in your project so others can use it.

Answer 3

I develop in PHP. And I use Debian as guest OS, and Win7 as host OS.

You can done automaticly mount share folder by:

1. new a file in /etc/init.d/ named mnt_win_sf, than you edit it:

   It must has the same info head with /etc/init.d/apache2. And you need just one line of command:

   mount -t vboxsf share_folder_name mount_point

2. We also need to excute this script before apache2, so we edit /etc/init.d/apache2. In the Require Start line, add mnt_win_sf

3. update them by:

   sudo update-rc.d mnt_win_sf defaults

   sudo update-rc.d apache2 defaults