Vagrant support for Windows

[minusdavid]

I was looking at installing Archivematica via Vagrant today, but I have a Windows workstation and Windows isn't supported as a control machine with Ansible. I suppose I could try using the Windows Subsystem for Linux, but that's not really supported by anyone either.

In any case, I think this could be the solution:
https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/provisioning/ansible_local.html

This has been used with Koha to allow Windows-based developers to use Vagrant as well.

I'm going to look at trying this out tomorrow, and then I'll send a pull request if I get it up and running.

[minusdavid]

I noticed today that a lack of Windows support is explicitly stated at https://www.archivematica.org/en/docs/archivematica-1.6/admin-manual/installation/installation/#automated-ubuntu-github-install, but I think it shouldn't be too hard.

My work on this issue is still in progress... having Ansible run in Windows has mostly worked. I've run into 1 problem so far and it's that the Archivematica git repository uses symlinks and that requires special consideration on Windows.

For newer versions of Git for Windows, Git will autodetect symlinks and try to make them in Windows, but only Administrators can make symlinks by default. Even if you use an Administrator to clone deploy-pub, there are more Git actions later when you're using your regular user, which will cause problems. I've noted this on artefactual-labs/ansible-archivematica-src#94.

So rather than using the Administrator, it seems better to give oneself the privilege of creating symlinks. I've just done that, and I'm about to try that out some more...

[minusdavid]

So I used Local Security Policy (ie secpol.msc) and went to "Local Policies" then "User Rights Assignment" and gave my regular user the privilege to create symlinks.

Then, I cloned deploy-pub again (as it had already done the Ansible task of checking out the Archivematica code and it needed to be re-done to get the symlinks to work), and that fixed the problem I reported in the other issue.

Now I'm just waiting for Ansible to finish provisioning. Hopefully that's symlink problem is the only one that rears its head...

[minusdavid]

Hurray! Ansible finished successfully and the Vagrant box is up!

Since I'm still new to Archivematica and its dependencies and components, I'll need to take some time to verify that it all actually came up OK, but this is exciting.

My changes to the Vagrantfile are fairly minimal, so hopefully Artefactual will find them acceptable.

As for the privileges, I'll try it just using the Administrator account instead of a regular user with an elevated privilege, although I suppose either of those would be an obstacle to some people in office environments. However, if it's a support company or an internal IT team, they should be able to get one of those two options.

I figure if we add a written caveat about the Windows privileges then that should be sufficient.

[sevein]

@minusdavid, you're doing an amazing job. You can take for granted that we will try our best to incorporate your changes.

I figure if we add a written caveat about the Windows privileges then that should be sufficient.

Definitely.