Create a Windows Box
This tool enables users to create Windows Vagrant Boxes in a short time. It therefore uses packer and VirtualBox. A user can choose the system by providing the windows version (e.g. Windows 10), version (e.g. 21H1), edition (e.g. Home), language (e.g. English) and architecture (e.g. x64) of the preferred windows image. After deciding on a a windows image the use can run the tool with the boxcreate subcommand to create the vagrant box as shown in the example below:
windupbox boxcreate 'windows_version=Windows 10,version=21H2,edition=Pro,language=English,architecture=x64'
After executing the command the tool will download the regarding system image from the microsoft website.
Alternatively it is also possible to provide the system image by the using the -iso option.
After the successful execution of the tool you will find a directory in your current working directory, named by the windows version, version and edition.
This directory contains a log directory with logfiles of the creation process as well as a box directory with the created box file, ready to use with vagrant.
In order to see all available systems run windup os list -a.
Further information on how to filter the available os can be found in the section List and filter available systems .
Due to the large amount of different windows versions, editions and so on, not all are tested so far. If a specific windows version is not working for you feel free to create a github issue or even better build a custom so called boxcreator class addressing the differences. A tutorial on how to do that can be found in Create a boxcreator class.
System Customizations
To further customize the created boxes there are multiple options for the boxcreator subcommand available, which are described in the table below:
command line option |
description |
|---|---|
|
specify the bcp47 code used for the language for keyboard layout and installation (a list of bcp47 codes can be found here) |
|
install OpenSSH Server and set up so that it can be used be vagrant as the communicator |
|
install chocolatey |
|
install provided packages with choco (and automatically install chocolatey) |
|
run provided powershell scripts (provide a directory or a set of paths) |
|
insert windows product key into the windows installation |
Further command line options
There are a few other options for the boxcreator subcommand available to customize the execution.
command line option |
description |
|---|---|
|
specify a directory, which is used for files that are created the box creation process such as the packerfile, scripts and the output box
(if not provided a directory will be created in the actual directory)
|
|
disable cleanup after packer build process to preserve the used scripts and the used packerfile |
|
path of an windows iso file (will skip the download process) |