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+# Development environment setup
+
+This project used vagrant for as standard development environment. This should
+easy setting things up and reduce environment related errors.
+
+## What you need
+
+There are 3 things you will need to get before your local environment is up and
+running.
+
+### Git
+
+This should already be installed on your system. If you are using Windows,
+install [git bash for windows](https://git-scm.com/download/win)
+
+### VirtualBox
+
+Virtual box will be used to create a manged Linux VM on your computer. Please
+install version 5.9 as version 6 is not supported.
+
+### Vagrant
+
+Vagrant is used to managed the local virtual environment and provision the VM.
+**MAKE SURE GIT VIRTUAL BOX ARE INSTALLED FIRST!!!** At install time, vagrant
+will integrate with them.
+
+## Usage
+
+Once you have everything installed and the projected cloned on your local
+computer, open a terminal( Git Bash for windows users ) and move to the root of
+the project.
+
+### Chef secrets
+
+This project like many other used secret API tokens that we do want tracked in
+the git repo. in the root of the project, create a file called 'secrets.json' 
+and populate like so:
+
+```json
+{
+	"django": {
+		"github": {
+			"id": "<ID>",
+			"secret": "<SECRET>",
+			"token": "<TOKEN>"
+		}
+	}
+}
+
+```
+
+### Basic vagrant usage and commands
+
+We will interact with the project using vagrant. The work flow is `vagrant up`
+creates a VM for your project and runs the provisioner to set everything up.
+This command should be ran after the project is cloned or when you sit down to 
+start development. This command may take some time to complete depending on how 
+complex the project is. Once the VM is set up, you may now interact with it. 
+Vagrant will forward ports from the project to the user localhost address. For
+example with this project, port 80 from the container will be mapped to
+localhost:8000 and you will be able to access there. If you make a change to any
+provisioning chef recipes, `vagrant provision` will need to ran. This will
+run the chef provisioner on the VM making any changes needed. 
+
+Because we use the `secrets.json` file to store untracked configuration, all
+vagrant command need to be ran where in the root of the project, where
+`secrets.json` lives.
+
+### `vagrant up`
+
+Will start the local VM, creating it if needed. This command should always be
+ran when a development session is started.
+
+### `vagrant provision`
+
+Will run the chef-solo provisioner. This will need to be ran anytime the chef 
+recipes or roles are changed.
+
+### `vagrant status`
+
+Will show you the status of local manged VM
+
+### `vagrant halt`
+
+Will shutdown the local VM. This should be done when you are finished working on
+the project so you dont have a VM running in the background eating CPU/RAM and
+battery. `vagrant up` can be used later to turn the VM back on.
+
+### `vagrant destroy`
+
+This will shutdown the VM and delete it. This command is useful if you have 
+messed up the VM and want to start from scratch. Or if you are done with the
+project and want to free space from the computer.
+
+### `vagrant ssh`
+
+This will bring you into the local VM as the vagrant user. The vagrant user has
+sudo. Use this only for debugging! **DO NOT INSTALL OR CHANGE THE STATE OF
+PROJECT OR VM FROM HERE!!!!** that will break the concept of provisioning make 
+chef useless. Also make installation and configuration changes with chef. 
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