Vagrant: need a way to check VirtualBox version from provider block

[aspiers]

I have a Vagrantfile describing an environment which only works with VirtualBox >= 4.3. How can I add a check to the Vagrantfile to enforce this? Thanks.

[mitchellh]

Vagrant doesn't have this enforcement. It would be possible to do so via maybe a config.vm.provider provider-specific configuration, but that also doesn't exist for VirtualBox at the moment. I've gotten this requested once in a couple years (twice now), so the priority is low enough that we have no plans to push this higher.

But, this isn't a bad request. Hopefully someone contributes it!

(Closing since we don't keep open requests we don't intend on filling officially)

[mitchellh]

I'll keep it open for some time to see if someone does it. After a certain point of inactivity, I'll close, just to give it a chance on the issue list.

[aspiers]

Thanks. Actually I already had a look at this. It seems the version is already available via VagrantPlugins::ProviderVirtualBox::Driver::Meta#version, but based on a quick pry, there's no way of accessing the provider object from the config object. So I think this might require modifying plugins/kernel_v2/config/vm.rb so that the provider is accessible from the config... or something like that. I haven't got my head around all the code yet, e.g. the currying for overrides. But it feels like it should be doable.

[mitchellh]

config.vm doesn't really have any knowledge of the provider. What I would do instead is add a new setting to the VirtualBox provider-specific configuration so you can do somethign like this:

config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|
    v.required_version = ">= 1.2.3"
end

[mitchellh]

As I said a year ago, this was never implemented, so closing.

[marco-m]

@aspiers did you manage to find a way ? I am exactly in the same situation, I need to enforce a minimum VirtualBox version.

[aspiers]

I'm afraid not.

[eis]

Since this feature does not exist, I've used a simple and crude workaround of just using ruby shell in the beginning of Vagrantfile. Maybe it's of help to someone:

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

vbox_version=`vboxmanage --version`
vb = vbox_version.split('.').map{|s|s.to_i}
vb_min = [5,1,0]
if ((vb <=> vb_min) < 0)
    abort('virtualbox needs to be at least of version 5.1.0 for this box')
end

VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"
# etc...

[ericcitaire]

Here is the code I use to get VirtualBox version:

def virtualbox_version()
    vboxmanage = Vagrant::Util::Which.which("VBoxManage") || Vagrant::Util::Which.which("VBoxManage.exe")
    if vboxmanage != nil
        s = Vagrant::Util::Subprocess.execute(vboxmanage, '--version')
        return s.stdout.strip!
    else
        return nil
    end
end

Hope this helps.

[marco-m]

@ericcitaire thanks! Your snippet is cross-platform, which is what I needed!

[marco-m]

Here is yet another variant, the one I currently use to enforce a minimum VIrtualBox version. This too is cross-platform:

MIN_VIRTUALBOX_VERSION = Gem::Version.new('5.2.8')
version = `VBoxManage --version`
clean_version = /[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+/.match(version)
if Gem::Version.new(clean_version) < MIN_VIRTUALBOX_VERSION
    abort "Please upgrade to Virtualbox >= #{MIN_VIRTUALBOX_VERSION}"
end

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