Creates and updates Vagrant box metadata files (metadata.json)

An utility program which creates and updates Vagrant box metadata files. This program is meant for small-scale deployment and versioning of Vagrant base boxes to private servers. For large scale deployment it always better to just use Atlas.

This program requires Python 2.7 and can be installed via PIP:

pip install vagrant-metadata

Now, let's suppose you have a base box called precise64 in two flavors: one for Virtualbox and the other for VMWare. vagrant-metadata follows the "convention over configuration" principle and it expects a certain directory layout to do its magic. Let's start by creating the required directory structure:

mkdir -p precise64/1.0.0/virtualbox
mkdir -p precise64/1.0.0/vmware_desktop

At this point you should have a directory tree like this:

.
└── precise64
    └── 1.0.0
        ├── virtualbox
        └── vmware_desktop

Now you should copy your boxes to their appropriate directory and end up with something like this:

.
└── precise64
    └── 1.0.0
        ├── virtualbox
        │   └── precise64.box
        └── vmware_desktop
            └── precise64.box

Now let's go into the precise64 directory:

cd precise64

Since this is the first time we run vagrant-metadata we'll have to tell it something about the base box such as its URL, name and description:

vagrant-metadata --name="lvillani/precise64" --description="Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit" \
    --baseurl="http://lorenzo.villani.me/vagrant/precise64"

After a while, when vagrant-metadata exits, you will find a fresh metadata.json file which contains all the box metadata. At this point you can publish the whole precise64 directory somewhere.

Updating a box is easier than preparing a new one for publication. Let's suppose we want to publish version 2.0.0 of the precise64 box described before: create a new 2.0.0 directory with the same layout as before and copy your boxes there ending up with something like:

.
└── precise64
    ├── 1.0.0
    │   ├── virtualbox
    │   │   └── precise64.box
    │   └── vmware_desktop
    │       └── precise64.box
    ├── 2.0.0
    │   ├── virtualbox
    │   │   └── precise64.box
    │   └── vmware_desktop
    │       └── precise64.box
    └── metadata.json

At this point go to the precise64 directory and run vagrant-metadata:

cd precise64
vagrant-metadata

Notice that we don't even have to specify the box name, description or base URL.

Sync this directory with your remote server and you are done.

If you don't have all box files downloaded locally, and want to add new version to existing metadata.json simply add --append (-a) option to only add new version box to existing metadata