Can the development environment run on in a virtual machine, or is a physical machine needed?

Question

When setting up a linux develoment environment, I'm thinking of installing it into a VMWare virtual machine that will be hosted on windows. Will that work, or are there issues I need to consider?

Update 15 May 2017: Can confirm that Ubuntu 16.10 with Virtual box runs the Jevois demo in guvcview fine. I'm running it under an intel box with an i5 processor.

Answer 1

If your environment is Windows and your OS 64bits:

I can confirm that running Unbuntu_16.10 (https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop: down on the page) inside VirtualBox_5.14 (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) with the Extension pack (to see usb2 devices) is OK for :

1. Compiling code
2. Running guvcview (and seeing the WebCam stream)
3. Formating/writing an inserted SD card.

You can follow this Instructable (http://www.instructables.com/id/Introduction-38/) to set everything up. If Ubuntu (64 bits) does not appear during the VM creation, it is probably because the VT-x (virtualization extension)  is not enabled in the Bios of your machine: restart your machine, enter the Bios, and hunt for the option!

Comments

we also got everything working on VirtualBox with a Mac (El Capitan) host, except for video capture (guvcview or otherwise) which does not seem to properly stream. jevois-daemon works fine when using a video file as input as opposed to a live camera, which you can do using: jevois-daemon --cameradev=/path/to/movie.mpg

Answer 2

A virtual machine should work fine if all you want to do is compile code. Just install Ubuntu 16.10 amd64 on it. Things that should also work but may need some testing are:

1. Can you stream video from a usb camera? For that just install guvcview on your guest linux system and see whether you can access a camera and stream video. If it works with guvcview then it should also work with JeVois.

2. Can you write sectors of a microSD card? To try that, just insert a microSD and check whether your linux guest can reformat it using standard tools like the Disks tool in Ubuntu. If so then you should be fine with JeVois too.