» File Provisioner

Provisioner name: "file"

The Vagrant file provisioner allows you to upload a file or directory from thehost machine to the guest machine.

File provisioning is a simple way to, for example, replicate your local~/.gitconfig to the vagrant user's home directory on the guest machine soyou will not have to run git config —global every time you provision anew VM.

  1. Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  2.   # ... other configuration
  4.   config.vm.provision "file", source: "~/.gitconfig", destination: ".gitconfig"
  5. end

If you want to upload a folder to your guest system, it can be accomplished byusing a file provisioner seen below. When copied, the resulting folder on the guest willreplace folder as newfolder and place its on the guest machine. Note that ifyou'd like the same folder name on your guest machine, make sure that the destinationpath has the same name as the folder on your host.

  1. Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  2.   # ... other configuration
  4.   config.vm.provision "file", source: "~/path/to/host/folder", destination: "$HOME/remote/newfolder"
  5. end

Prior to copying ~/path/to/host/folder to the guest machine:

  1.     folder
  2.     ├── script.sh
  3.     ├── otherfolder
  4.     │   └── hello.sh
  5.     ├── goodbye.sh
  6.     ├── hello.sh
  7.     └── woot.sh
  9.     1 directory, 5 files

After to copying ~/path/to/host/folder into $HOME/remote/newfolder to the guest machine:

  1.     newfolder
  2.     ├── script.sh
  3.     ├── otherfolder
  4.     │   └── hello.sh
  5.     ├── goodbye.sh
  6.     ├── hello.sh
  7.     └── woot.sh
  9.     1 directory, 5 files

Note that, unlike with synced folders, files or directories that are uploadedwill not be kept in sync. Continuing with the example above, if you makefurther changes to your local ~/.gitconfig, they will not be immediatelyreflected in the copy you uploaded to the guest machine.

The file uploads by the file provisioner are done as theSSH or PowerShell user. This is important since these users generallydo not have elevated privileges on their own. If you want to upload files tolocations that require elevated privileges, we recommend uploading themto temporary locations and then using theshell provisionerto move them into place.

» Options

The file provisioner takes only two options, both of which are required:

  • source (string) - Is the local path of the file or directory to beuploaded.

  • destination (string) - Is the remote path on the guest machine wherethe source will be uploaded to. The file/folder is uploaded as the SSH userover SCP, so this location must be writable to that user. The SSH user can bedetermined by running vagrant ssh-config, and defaults to "vagrant". Bothforward and backward slash work for Windows guest. Variables like $HOME areexpanded by Vagrant, not by guest.

» Caveats

While the file provisioner does support trailing slashes or "globing", this canlead to some confusing results due to the underlying tool used to copy files andfolders between the host and guests. For example, if you have a source anddestination with a trailing slash defined below:

  1. config.vm.provision "file", source: "~/pathfolder", destination: "/remote/newlocation/"

You are telling vagrant to upload ~/pathfolder under the remote dir /remote/newlocation,which will look like:

  1.     newlocation
  2.     ├── pathfolder
  3.     │   └── file.sh
  5.     1 directory, 2 files

This behavior can also be achieved by defining your file provisioner below:

  1. config.vm.provision "file", source: "~/pathfolder", destination: "/remote/newlocation/pathfolder"

Another example is using globing on the host machine to grab all files within afolder, but not the top level folder itself:

  1. config.vm.provision "file", source: "~/otherfolder/.", destination: "/remote/otherlocation"

The file provisioner is defined to include all files under ~/otherfolderto the new location /remote/otherlocation. This idea can be achieved by simplyhaving your destination folder differ from the source folder:

  1. config.vm.provision "file", source: "/otherfolder", destination: "/remote/otherlocation"