[mdlug] Developer setup advice

[David]

I am programming in a variety of languages for MS Windows, Linux, and 
Android, and have always used a dual-boot system.  The problem is that 
maintaining eclipse, Visual studio, android sdk, java the debug symbol 
setups and downloads, plugins, etc, can mess up at some point requiring 
a lot of time to fix. The trend has been to setup VMs for the 
development environment so you can easily and/or quickly restore from 
images or snapshots of a stable system if something goes wrong, instead 
of reinstalling for 3 days.

I have been debating whether to go kvm, xen, vmware, qemu, hyper-v or 
whatever rather than a dual-boot setup.

I just accidentally stumbled onto a book about Vagrant, which claims to
  "Create and configure lightweight, reproducible, and portable 
development environments", and can integrate with vmware. Does anyone 
have any experience with Vagrant, or other solutions for this type of 
scenario?  Any devs out there care to share some tips or advice about 
maintaining your development environment?

Thanks,
David