Packer is a tool to build (virtual) machines with simple scripts, without the need to download pre-made machines including virtual hard drive files. We use it to build a VirtualBox VM given a link of an official Ubuntu installer iso.
You need to install packer and VirtualBox. Then:
cp create_local-dev.sh.example create_local-dev.sh
chmod a+x create_local-dev.sh
./create_local-dev.sh
You can edit create_local-dev.sh before to set a name in VirtualBox.
The machine is registered in VirtualBox and one way to start is in the GUI when starting virtualbox.
You can either use port forwarding (settings->network->adapter 1->advanced)
or change the Adapter to host-only or bridged network).
Once you know what IP/port you can use to connect,
you can use ssh-copy-id to push your SSH key and setup local-dev with:
cp inventory/local.example inventory/local
and editing inventory/local for your setup.