Local PHP Development Environment Setup with Vagrant

Created by Linh M. Tran

Agenda

  1. Introduction
  2. The perfect development setup flow
  3. Popular setup flows
  4. Intro to Vagrant
  5. Examples using Vagrant for PHP development
  6. Conclusion

Introduction

As a developer, local development environment is literally where you live and what your life depend on!

But setting up it is often the more boring and tedius task that all of us, developers, want to avoid


Will Vagrant change this?

The perfect dev environment setup flow

  • Easy and Fast
  • Create an environment that's as close as possible to the production environment
  • The result environment can be easily recreated and even shared between team member
  • Not boring and should not make you hate your job

Some popular ways to setup dev environment

Manually Do Things

I want to do it the hard way

  • Installs packages is often quite easy on Linux OS (Ubuntu, Fedor) and is a great experience to set all of them up
    • 
# Ubuntu example
$ sudo apt-get install mysql postgresql php5-fpm php5-mcrypt nginx
  • In MacOS X, Homebrew can be used to install packages (but configuration may not as easy as in Linux Os)
    • 
$ brew tap hombrew/php
$ brew install php56 php56-mcrypt composer nginx
  • And you really don't want to do this in Windows

Do it the hard way

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Work great when your main OS is a Linux one
  • A great experience for the adventourous

Cons

  • Hell experience for Windows users, not so fun one for Mac lover
  • Have to manually do a lot of configuration even in a Linux OS
  • Does not work so well with different projects and different requirements

Prepackaged Solutions

I just want to take it easy

Xampp Wamp Mamp

Prepackaged Solutions

Pros
  • The savior for Windows users (possibly some Mac users)
  • Super easy to setup, even for non developers
  • Default sane configuration, almost popular apps (wordpress, joomla,...) can run without further configuration

Prepackaged Solutions

Cons
  • With non trivial applications, you will still have to manually do things (vhost, php.ini, ...)
  • Things may break when you need somethings that do not come prepackaged
    • Just google setup memcached, redis, mongodb... with MAMP
    • Or google "Setup boris with MAMP in Mac OSX" (shameless plug)
  • Depends on the owners for new updates, fixes
  • Too different from production environment
  • Does not work so well with big projects with a lot different requirements

Virtual Machine

Almost got it right

VMWare Virtual Box

Virtual Machine

Pros
  • Cross platform, work well with a diverse team (Apple haters, Linux lovers, MS loyalist v..v..)
  • Isolated environment, your precious machine will not be polluted with dozen kinds of packages
  • Can simulate the production environment for every kind of projects
  • VMs can be shared easily

Virtual Machine

Cons
  • Performance is not so well for people with weak machine
  • VMs may take a not so small amount of your hard disk space
  • If install from scratch, normal Linux installation often comes with unnecessary overhead
  • Still have to manually do a lot of thing
    • Find the iso/VM image. Install/add to your VMs program
    • Manually configure network, port forwarding, shared folder...
    • Manually install packages, configure them
    • ....

Intro To

Vagrant

Beware the coming of the Savior!

What is Vagrant

"Vagrant is a tool for building complete development environments. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases development/production parity, and makes the "works on my machine" excuse a relic of the past." -- Vagrant Website

Technically, it's a wrapper around virutalization softwares (Virtualbox, VMWare...) and configuration tools like (Chef, Ansible, Puppet..) that help you manage and configure virtual environments automatically

A little taste of Vagrant

  • Install Vagrant
    • Download from Vagrant Website
    • Using Brew 
      
$ brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask
$ brew cask install vagrant
  • Spin up a Ubuntu 14.04 VM for test drive 
    
$ cd $your_project_folder
$ vagrant init ubuntu/trusty64
$ vagrant up
$ vagrant status

Vagrant Basics

Providers

  • They are simply type of virtual machines that Vagrant support
  • Currently, Vagrant default support VirtualBox, Docker, Hyper-V, VMWare (with paid plugin)
  • You can create a plugin to add a custom provider

Vagrant Basics

Box

  • The package format for Vagrant Environment (.box file)
  • A base box is necessary for Vagrant to build your environment
  • To discover public box, go to public Vagrant box catalog
  • Example working with box 
    
  $ vagrant box add ubuntu/trusty64 # Download the box from Vagrant public catalog
  $ vagrant box add homestead/laravel homestead-0.2.1.box # Add local box
  $ vagrant box list
  laravel/homestead (virtualbox, 0.2.1)
  ubuntu/trusty64   (virtualbox, 14.04)
  $ vagrant box #See all box related command

Vagrant Basics

Vagrantfile

  • Created by running the following command in your project folder 
    
  $ vagrant init
  • Using Ruby syntax
  • Describe the type of machine required for a project, and how to configure and provision these machines
    • Provider, base box
    • Network: private ip, port forwarding, synced folder...
    • Provision method
  • Vagrantfile is per project and should be included in version control

Vagrant Basics

Provisioning

  • The process to configure your Vagrant environment using defined configuration in Vagrantfile with the help of provisioners
  • And provisioners are just configuration tools that Vagrant support (Chef, Puppet, Ansible... or even Shell (Bash Script))

Vagrant Basics

Basic Workflow

  • Download your basebox 
    
$ vagrant box add ubuntu/trusty64
  • Initialize Vagrant in your project folder with the above basebox 
    
$ cd $project_folder
$ vagrant init ubuntu/trusty64
  • After edit Vagrantfile, start up the Vagrant environment (this will also do initial provisioning) 
    
$ vagrant up

Vagrant Basics

Basic Workflow (cont.)

  • SSH to the Vagrant box and do some evil things 
    
$ vagrant ssh
  • Something is not quite right with the provision process, make some changes and re provision 
    
$ vagrant provision
  • Time to go home, turn off or sleep the Vagrant box 
    
$ vagrant suspend #sleep
# or if I'm bored
$ vagrant halt #turn off

Vagrant Basics

Basic Workflow (cont.)

  • Another day come, have to work a gain 
    
$ vagrant up # No provisioning this time
# or
$ vagrant resume # For sleeping machine
  • I'm feeling generous, so I packaged my box and send it to my coworkers as Christmas gift 
    
$ vagrant package # create a package.box file
  • Project ended, time to save space for movies and games 
    
$ vagrant destroy

Examples using Vagrant for PHP development

Demo time

Using Laravel Homestead

Really thank you, Taylor Otwell

  • Just follow the docs and you will running a PHP development environment in no time
  • You can check ~/.composer/vendor/laravel/homestead/ folders to understand how it work
  • If you want to add your modification script, add it to ~/.homestead/after.sh

Using Bash Script to provision your Environment

Highly dangerous! You have been warned

  • Use your bash script skill to configure and install your environment
  • Example setup code in Vagrantfile 
    
# Setup PostgreSQL
config.vm.provision 'shell' do |s|
  pg_username = 'homestead'
  pg_password = 'secret'
  pg_db = 'homestead'
  s.path = './provisioning/setup_postgres.sh'
  s.args = [pg_username, pg_password, pg_db]
end
  • Check my github repo for full code

Using Ansible to provision your Environment

  • Ansible is an extreme powerful automation tool to configure and manage remote servers
  • It takes some times to learn but the result is rewarding
  • Example setup code in Vagrantfile 
    
config.vm.provision 'ansible' do |ansible|
  ansible.limit = 'local'
  ansible.playbook = 'provisioning/playbook.yml'
  ansible.inventory_path = 'provisioning/hosts'
end
  • Check my github repo for full code

Conclusion

Conclusion

Vagrant - Pros

  • All of the advantages of virtual machine approach
  • Require less system resources than virtual machine
  • Automate almost everthing
  • Really easy for developers in team to share and recreate the development environment

Conclusion

Vagrant - Cons

  • To harness the full power of vagrant, there is a bit of learning required
  • Still has some performance issues
  • Sometimes, it's not always right to run everything like in a production environment

Grand Conclusion

Vagrant is a great tool and will make your life as a developer much more enjoyable. But all good things come with a cost. Be patient, keep learning and don't break anything when things do not work as expected :D

THE END

BY Linh M. Tran