Is it safe to use a virtual server as dev environment, symlinking to files on the host?
I used to use MAMP (or just a local Apache/PHP/MySQL stack) to work on web projects. I've since graduated to a live Ubuntu server which is much closer to the production environments for the sites I work on.

Now I'm trying to take this a step further to optimize my workflow. My goal is to have a Linux server running in VirtualBox that automounts a local folder share (from the host) and uses a symlink to gain access to the files (i.e. client:/var/www/dev is a symlink to host:/Users/charlie/dev/).

I don't want to keep my files stored on the virtual server if it can be avoided. I prefer having direct local access to the files and not having to wait for buffering issues between the host and the client. i.e., if I have several files that are located on the client open in my IDE and I close my laptop, as soon as I open it there's a bit of a buffer issue. My IDE has open project(s) that reference folders and files located on a network share that isn't yet available. In the few seconds it takes for the virtual machine to wake up, OSX is already reporting that the share can't be found and was disconnected, the IDE chokes up, etc. 

So what am I asking? Well, is this safe / are there obvious pitfalls I'm not seeing / better ways to do this?
Is it safe to use a virtual server as dev environment, symlinking to files on the host?
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I used to use MAMP (or just a local Apache/PHP/MySQL stack) to work on web projects. I've since graduated to a live Ubuntu server which is much closer to the production environments for the sites I work on.

Now I'm trying to take this a step further to optimize my workflow. My goal is to have a Linux server running in VirtualBox that automounts a local folder share (from the host) and uses a symlink to gain access to the files (i.e. client:/var/www/dev is a symlink to host:/Users/charlie/dev/).

I don't want to keep my files stored on the virtual server if it can be avoided. I prefer having direct local access to the files and not having to wait for buffering issues between the host and the client. i.e., if I have several files that are located on the client open in my IDE and I close my laptop, as soon as I open it there's a bit of a buffer issue. My IDE has open project(s) that reference folders and files located on a network share that isn't yet available. In the few seconds it takes for the virtual machine to wake up, OSX is already reporting that the share can't be found and was disconnected, the IDE chokes up, etc. 

So what am I asking? Well, is this safe / are there obvious pitfalls I'm not seeing / better ways to do this?