Add documentation for VM dev machine(using free or open source software)

[CorbanR]

Some great documentation has been added via https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/pull/940. However the current documentation is referencing paid software (such as VMware). It would be nice to figure out an alternative free option when setting up local dev.

[gj]

I'm all for adding documentation for alternatives, but just as a note the steps in #940 were done using the free "evaluation" copy of Fusion 🙂

[CorbanR]

You eventually have to buy Fusion if you want to continue to use it yes? The scope of this particular issue is to document a fully free and open source alternative local dev setup.

[gj]

It's possible to continue cycling the Fusion trial in perpetuity, but it's certainly not an ideal setup. I think this issue is really valuable and definitely didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I just wanted to point out that if "free" is the main qualifier, it's possible to achieve that with Fusion. That being said, not relying on a loophole in a trial version of a paid, closed source product definitely sounds like a better path forward 😄

[raduweiss]

I think the free&open dev setup is probably QEMU-based. If anyone wants to contribute instructions for that it would be great.

[karuppiah7890]

@raduweiss I recently was able to run with VirtualBox in MacOS. Shall I put something together to tell how to run it and may be we can see if that could be added as a doc? I also used vagrant to manage the VM

[raduweiss]

Yeah, that would be useful. Feel free to open a PR against https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/blob/master/docs/dev-machine-setup.md .

[karuppiah7890]

Okay! 😄

[richardcase]

Some of the engineers at WW are using Vagrant (and Virtualbox) to build a Linux machine for running Firecracker when using MacOS.

[richardcase]

@jmickey - your vagrant work could be adapted to help with this issues. wdyt?