The document discusses the benefits and processes of setting up virtual development environments using tools like VirtualBox and Vagrant. It highlights common pitfalls in traditional development setups, the importance of automation and standardization, and provides practical instructions for using Vagrant to streamline development workflows. Additionally, it covers collaboration tips, provisioning automation options, and testing scenarios for PHP and Drupal applications.

1. Oscar Merida
January 21, 2014
Building with Virtual
Development Environments

2. Musketeers.me
What will we look at?
• Benefits of using a Virtual Machine
• Setting up a virtual environment
• Updating your workflow

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Who uses…
• XAMP, MAMP?
• Acquia Dev Desktop?
• Homebrew, Ports, etc?
• Shared development environment?
• Production?!

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Early Tools were Crude
• “One-size-fits-all”
• Difficult to customize per
site, or may not support
multiple projects
• Tricky to update
• Inconsistent across
individuals

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Projects are special
snowflakes
• Different PHP versions / extensions
• Different databases / versions
• What about additional services
• Redis?
• Memcached?

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Common pitfalls
• Mismatches between development,
staging, QA, & production environments
• bugs that “only happen on live”
• Setup can be tedious and fragile
• Setup is poorly documented

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Virtualization
• Use a Virtual Machine (VM) identical
to production environment.
• Automate setting up the VM, aka
“Provisioning”
• Share setup more easily with
collaborators.

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Virtualization?
• “Hardware virtualization or platform virtualization
refers to the creation of a virtual machine that acts
like a real computer with an operating system.
Software executed on these virtual machines is
separated from the underlying hardware resources.
For example, a computer that is running Microsoft
Windows may host a virtual machine that looks like
a computer with the Ubuntu Linux operating
system; Ubuntu-based software can be run on the
virtual machine.”
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization

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Virtualbox
• Free & Open Source Virtualization
software
• https://www.virtualbox.org
• Runs on Windows, Linux, Mac (+more)
• https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
• There’s also VMWare, Parallels, and others…

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Hardware
• Memory helps — a lot
• need enough to dedicate to the
Guest OS
• Disk space
• use files to represent and persist
virtual hard disk storage

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Vagrant
• “A tool for building complete
development environments”
• https://www.vagrantup.com/
• A Vagrantfile + provisioner
automatically configures a VM Box for
you.
• … but someone has to make it

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OK, let’s get to the
good stuff already!
• Assuming you’ve installed Vagrant &
Virtualbox…
• What’s the easiest way to get a VM
working?

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PuPHPet (puffet)
• Online GUI to create
Virtual Machines
• Choose base OS, PHP,
Mysql, and more
• Download a zip file with
Vagrantfile and
supporting files

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Using your Vagrantfile
• Tip: extract the zip file to your
project’s root directory
• Basic vagrant commands:
• vagrant up - start up the VM
• vagrant ssh - SSH to the VM

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Other Vagrant commands
• vagrant suspend - put the VM to sleep,
use this between work sessions.
• vagrant stop - turn off the VM.
• vagrant destroy - delete the VM,
CAUTION!

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Ooooh, A VM…
• working with files
• viewing your development site in a
browser
• running drush

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Mapped folders
• By default Vagrant maps your project’s
folder on the Host OS to
/vagrant on the Guest OS.
• For example
• If your project is /home/omerida/drupal8
• The same files are in /vagrant on your VM

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File permissions gotcha
• Need to insure web server can write
to /sites/default/files
• mount with “anyone can write” file
permissions
• run apache as the vagrant user
• add apache to the vagrant group
• https://www.drupal.org/node/2055947

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This means…
• Work on PHP, CSS, image, and other files
locally with your favorite IDE, text editor,
and other programs.
• … and the changes are automatically
reflected in your Virtual Environment
• I’ve found default shared maps fine,
some people recommend using NSF but
that involves more setup

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Browsing your site
• Your Vagrantfile will setup networking so that
the VM is accessible from the Guest OS,
Usually a private address like 192.168.33.10
• Add this IP to your /etc/hosts file
•192.168.33.10 project.dev
• On windows Hosts file is trickier to find.
• You’ll need admin privileges to edit
• Go to “http://project.dev” in your browser

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Running drush
• vagrant ssh to login to the VM
• > cd /web
• > drush status
• Can install drush from your Guest OS
package repository

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Vagrant Drupal
Development
• https://www.drupal.org/project/vdd
• Fully configured Linux based VM
• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

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Collaboration tips
• One person responsible for initial
setup and configuration
• Commit your Vagrantfile + related
files to your code repository
• Standardize on Virtualbox & Vagrant
versions

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Provisioners
• You might outgrow PuPHPet (or
phansible.com)
• Various options for automating
• Puppet
• Chef
• Ansible
• Shell Scripts

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Other Use Cases
• Will my code run with PHP 5.6?
• What if I switch Mysql for Percona,
MariaDB, etc
• Redis or memcached for caching?
• How do I setup Varnish for my site?

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Testing Drupal 8
• Get Drupal 8 running:
• https://github.com/omerida/drupal8-
vm
• https://github.com/SandyS1/d8ansible

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Thank You!
• Twitter: @omerida
• Editor-in-Chief php[architect] magazine
• plus Conferences, Training, and books
• www.phparch.com
• Any Questions?