Please note this VM is not designed for Rails application development with MS SQL Server, only ActiveRecord SQL Server core development.

Microsoft now supports running MS SQL Server server and the command-line tool sqlcmd on Linux (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/quickstart-install-connect-ubuntu). This document describes how to use a virtual machine for working on the ActiveRecord SQL Server adapter itself. Use this virtual machine to work on a pull request with everything ready to hack and run the test suites, including an instance of MS SQL Server running in the virtual machine.

This project builds on the rails-dev-box project with additions to support SQL Server adapter developement.

The VM installs all the software required to run the Ruby on Rails tests suite too. This allows you to run the PostgreSQL/SQLite/MySQL adapter test suites alongside the SQL Server adapters tests.

The VM uses the Ubuntu 18.04 image as that's the version supported by Microsoft.

• VirtualBox

• Vagrant 2

• Install the vagrant-vbguest plugin: vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest.

Building the virtual machine is this easy:

host $ git clone https://github.com/rails-sqlserver/activerecord-sqlserver-adapter-dev-box.git host $ cd activerecord-sqlserver-adapter-dev-box host $ vagrant up 

That's it.

After the installation has finished, you can access the virtual machine with

host $ vagrant ssh Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-96-generic x86_64) ... vagrant@activerecord-sqlserver-adapter-dev-box:~$ 

Port 1443 in the host computer is forwarded to port 1443 in the virtual machine. So you can connect to the SQL Server DBMS running on the VM through localhost:1433. Azure Data Studio is available on Windows/MacOS/Linux and can be used to connect to the SQL Server database.

By default, the VM launches with 4 GB of RAM and 2 CPUs.

These can be overridden by setting the environment variables ACTIVERECORD_SQLSERVER_DEV_BOX_RAM and ACTIVERECORD_SQLSERVER_DEV_BOX_CPUS, respectively. Settings on VM creation don't matter, the environment variables are checked each time the VM boots.

ACTIVERECORD_SQLSERVER_DEV_BOX_RAM has to be expressed in megabytes, so configure 4096 if you want the VM to have 4 GB of RAM.

Ruby on Rails:

• Development tools

• Git

• Ruby 2.5

• Bundler

• SQLite3, MySQL, and Postgres

• Databases and users needed to run the Active Record test suite

• System dependencies for nokogiri, sqlite3, mysql2, and pg

• Memcached

• Redis

• RabbitMQ

• An ExecJS runtime

SQL Server:

• TinyTDS

• SQL Server

• SQL Server command line tools

• Databases and users needed to run the SQL Server adapter test suite

• rbenv

  • Ruby 3.0.6
  • Ruby 3.1.4
  • Ruby 3.2.2 default Ruby version

• Graphicviz

The recommended workflow is

• edit in the host computer and

• test within the virtual machine.

Just clone your SQL Server adapter fork into the activerecord-sqlserver-adapter-dev-box directory on the host computer:

host $ ls bootstrap.sh MIT-LICENSE README.md Vagrantfile host $ git clone [email protected]:<your username>/activerecord-sqlserver-adapter.git 

Vagrant mounts that directory as /vagrant within the virtual machine:

vagrant@activerecord-sqlserver-adapter-dev-box:~$ ls /vagrant bootstrap.sh MIT-LICENSE activerecord-sqlserver-adapter README.md Vagrantfile 

Install gem dependencies in there:

vagrant@activerecord-sqlserver-adapter-dev-box:~$ cd /vagrant/activerecord-sqlserver-adapter vagrant@activerecord-sqlserver-adapter-dev-box:/vagrant/activerecord-sqlserver-adapter-dev-box$ bundle 

We are ready to go to edit in the host, and test in the virtual machine.

Please have a look at the Contributing to Ruby on Rails guide for tips on how to run Rails test suites.

Please have a look at the Running Unit Tests guide on how to run the SQL Server adapter test suites.

This workflow is convenient because in the host computer you normally have your editor of choice fine-tuned, Git configured, and SSH keys in place.

When done just log out with ^D and suspend the virtual machine

host $ vagrant suspend 

then, resume to hack again

host $ vagrant resume 

Run

host $ vagrant halt 

to shutdown the virtual machine, and

host $ vagrant up 

to boot it again.

You can find out the state of a virtual machine anytime by invoking

host $ vagrant status 

Finally, to completely wipe the virtual machine from the disk destroying all its contents:

host $ vagrant destroy # DANGER: all is gone 

Please check the Vagrant documentation for more information on Vagrant.

The default mechanism for sharing folders is convenient and works out the box in all Vagrant versions, but there are a couple of alternatives that are more performant.

Vagrant 1.5 implements a sharing mechanism based on rsync that dramatically improves read/write because files are actually stored in the guest. Just throw

config.vm.synced_folder '.', '/vagrant', type: 'rsync' 

to the Vagrantfile and either rsync manually with

vagrant rsync 

or run

vagrant rsync-auto 

for automatic syncs. See the post linked above for details.

If you're using Mac OS X or Linux you can increase the speed of test suites with Vagrant's NFS synced folders.

With an NFS server installed (already installed on Mac OS X), add the following to the Vagrantfile:

config.vm.synced_folder '.', '/vagrant', type: 'nfs' config.vm.network 'private_network', ip: '192.168.50.4' # ensure this is available 

Then

host $ vagrant up 

Please check the Vagrant documentation on NFS synced folders for more information.

On vagrant up, it's possible to get this error message:

The box 'ubuntu/yakkety64' could not be found or could not be accessed in the remote catalog. If this is a private box on HashiCorp's Atlas, please verify you're logged in via vagrant login. Also, please double-check the name. The expanded URL and error message are shown below: URL: ["https://atlas.hashicorp.com/ubuntu/yakkety64"] Error: 

And a known work-around (Varying-Vagrant-Vagrants/VVV#354) can be:

sudo rm /opt/vagrant/embedded/bin/curl 

Released under the MIT License, Copyright (c) 2012–ω Xavier Noria.