Scholar’s Backpack

The Scholar’s Backpack uses Vagrant, VirtualBox, and Ansible to set up a reproducible computing environment that includes: Python 3 and a series of Python libraries that support scientific computing needs; R and RStudio as well as packages for scientific computing; and a Jupyter Notebook server which starts up with the machine and enables users to quickly and easily access and create Jupyter Notebooks.

The virtual machine is set up by Vagrant which is an open source tool that simplifies the creation of development environments. All set up instructions for Vagrant are easily reproducible because they are recorded in a single text file, allowing anyone to set up the same environment though a single command. The box itself is structured using VirtualBox, an open source tool that provides the container in which Vagrant sets up the machine. Finally, to further simplify the process and make it more transparent to beginners, we use Ansible as a provisioner. This allows us to add and remove libraries or tools that we want included in the environment using Ansible playbooks which are also easily reproducible text files. The operating system employed by the Scholar’s Backpack is Centos 7.