What is this? If you know what a virtual machine is and how it works, just go to the info below. If not, a virtual machine is like a computer inside your computer. There is no need to install a lot of different developer tools, checking versions, and having in mind a lot of things that you don't know about if your computer is not used to develop software.
The solution is to have a virtual machine inside your computer, with the same operating system the original developer used, that will be configured automatically, and you will connect from your real computer to this fake one, the same as if you were connecting to a remote mud in some internet server.
In the end, if you don't like what you see, or just get bored of these things, you just remove the virtual machine and et voilà everything will be gone and your own computer (called the host) won't have changed, being the best option for non-developers.
So, how to do this?
Software required to be installed: just these two things that allow installing and configuring virtual machines, the same for any operating system: VirtualBox & Vagrant.
And having access to some kind of command-line terminal.
- In Windows, execute (
Windows Key + r
) the commandcmd
. - In Mac OS, open the Terminal App (or use
Cmd + spacebar
and typeTerminal
). - In any kind of Unix/Linux, you know what we are talking about (and maybe you should just use the basic installation guide, not the virtual machine tutorial).
-
Download this repository to your local/host machine in your preferred directory, with:
git clone https://github.com/maldorne/hexagon.git
or, if you don't have git installed (why would you?), just download it from github as a zip file from the project page with the big green button that says Code -> Download Zip, and unzip it. -
Go to the directory where you placed the contents of that zip file, using the terminal and the command
cd
:- In Windows it would be something like
cd C:\Users\myuser\Downloads\something
. You can use thedir
command to see the contents of your current directory. Try, you won't break anything. - In Mac OS it would be something like
cd /Users/myusername/Downloads/something
. You can use thels
command to see the contents of your current directory.
- In Windows it would be something like
-
Go to the
provisioning
directory and install the virtual machine with:cd provisioning vagrant up --provider virtualbox
This will:
- Install needed packages
- Set initial configuration of the project
- Start the mud so you can test it
The app could be tested in telnet://192.168.10.192:6047/
If you want to use a different ip, it's defined in Vagrantfile
Once you have the development enviroment up and running, any change could be restored to the default init status with:
-
Destroy the virtual machine. In the virtual machine directory execute:
vagrant destroy
-
Reset the virtual machine:
vagrant up --provision
In a pair of minutes everything will be reinstalled: packages, configuration, etc.