I'm currently trying to use VVV to develop and test my plugins. My host OS is Win10.
My plugins are in D:\Workshop\projects\vendor\module. I've used this folder structure for a long time, and it is really convenient, especially for use with Composer and friends.
Now I've installed VVV, created a site with VV. I want to test a plugin, the source code of which is in D:\Workshop\projects\XedinUnknown\my-project. So, I create a symlink in D:\Workshop\projects\XedinUnknown\vvv-local\www\my-test-site\htdocs\wp-content\plugins that points to that project's folder. Alas, it doesn't work. If I SSH into VVV and ls /srv/www/my-test-site/htdocs/wp-content/plugins, I can see my-project there, but it points to ../../../../../../../XedinUnknown/my-project, which, of course, doesn't exist. If instead of symlink I create a junction, it's just an empty file.
I suspect that this has to do with how the Linux environment handles Windows symlinks, but I'm not entirely sure. Is it possible to make this work somehow? I really don't wanna copy the whole project folder into VVV.
This is also addressed here.
So, it would seem like I've found somewhat of a solution. I added a synched folder, which maps to my projects home. I then create a symlink to that folder from the WP plugins directory, inside the VM.
This should be done in a Customfile as explained here. This file should go into the same directory as the Vagrantfile, e.g. it will become the Vagrantfile's sibling. In my case, if you're following along from my question, it is in D:\Workshop\projects\XedinUnknown\vvv-local. Anything put here becomes global for the whole of VVV. This also gives you the ability to use different combinations of your projects in different websites. Add these contents to your Customfile, creating it if it does not exist.
config.vm.synced_folder "D:/Workshop/projects", "/srv/projects", :owner => "www-data", :mount_options => [ "dmode=775", "fmode=774" ]
Of course, you should replace D:/Workshop/projects with the path to where you store your projects. Note the forward slashes (/). This works on Win/Nix. For a Windows-only configuration, I suspect you'd have to replace them with \\, because this is an escape sequence.
This should be done in your site's vvv-init.sh file. In my case, this file was in D:\Workshop\projects\XedinUnknown\vvv-local\www\my-test-site\, because I want to create this symlink specifically for the my-test-site site. Please note that your VVV path will probably be different, and it doesn't have to be inside the projects directory. It's wherever you cloned VVV into. Add the below lines to your site's vvv-init.sh file.
if [ ! -f "htdocs/wp-content/plugins/my-project" ]; then
echo 'Creating symlink to plugin project...'
cd ./htdocs/wp-content/plugins
ln -s /srv/projects/XedinUnknown/my-project my-project
cd -
fi
In the above snippet, change the path to your desired project path, keeping in mind that /srv/projects/ now maps live to the projects root in your host OS. You can also replace the second occurrence (last word) of my-project in ln -s /srv/projects/XedinUnknown/my-project my-project with whatever you want. As long as you don't change it later, your plugin should not suddenly get de-activated.
Also, from what I understood, vvv-init.sh runs during provisioning, not every time the machine is brought up. So, if you want to run the code in there, you have to run vagrant up --provision from the VVV directory. If you don't want to provision, you can run it manually. SSH into VVV with vagrant ssh, then cd /srv/www/my-test-site (replace my-test-site with name of your site), and run . vvv-init.sh.
I am quite new to Bash scripting, and I don't know if my solution is the best one, so please feel free to suggest better versions of the Bash script. I also don't know Ruby, and am new to Vagrant, so please feel free to suggest improvements to the Customfile - this is in essence the same as the Vagrantfile.
One possible issue that I can anticipate with this solution (and this is inherently by design of the filesystem architecture) is that if WordPress decides to make changes to your plugin, e.g. if you run a WP update, it will effectively delete all files in your project, including the repository. So, on the testing site I would recommend using something like this. I am in no way associated with this plugin.