Devbox - Virtual LAMP server

Prerequisites

Devbox is a virtual devevelopment box for PHP and JavaScruipt development (including frameworks like Hugo, Symfony, WordPress and Drupal). Using the LAMP stack provided you can start development without worrying about setting up your computer as a development environment.

Devbox works with the following software:

• Vagrant >= 2.1.1
• Ansible >= 2.5
• VirtualBox
• Ubuntu Xenial 16.04

Devbox assumes that projects are developed with Git and requires a valid RSA key from the local user which has been added in Github.

Usage

Get devbox in your local machine:

git clone [email protected]:ioa-maellak/devbox.git && cd devbox

Create the configuration file to configure the development environment:

cp default.config.yml config.yml

Once done editing config.yml run Vagrant to create the development environment:

vagrant up

You can login to the devbox with the following command:

vagrant ssh

Happy coding! See below for configuration parameters.

Configuration

The development environment can be customised via the config.yml file and the variables contained within.

Configuring a remote user

The remote_user variable is used to set the user in the guest machine. The default user in Vagrant is ubuntu and is reccomended to be left as is.

Configuring an RSA key

The rsa_key variable accepts as input a path from the host machine which should resolve to an rsa key. It is used to authenticate in github and should be added there prior to any git related operations in the development server.

Configuring the server stack

The config_roles variable is used to customise the software stack configured in the server. Comment out roles not needed.

Configuring your projects

Vagrant allows to share directories between the host and the guest systems. Devbox takes advantage of that feature to expose local projects which can then be served through the LAMP stack.

Devbox expects a projects folder to exist in the same contains directory with devbox:

.
├── devbox
└── projects
   ├── projectA
   ├── projectB
   └── projectC

All directories contained withing projects will be exposed in ~/projects in the guest system.

For each project the following parameters can be set:

• domain (string): The URI to access project.
• docroot (string) The path of the project in devbox (user {{ remote_user }} for indepedence
• db_user (string): The name of the database user to be used (root will be used if empty)
• db_pass (string): The passwrd of the database user to be used (root will be used if empty)
• db_name (string): The database name to be used (if empty database creation is skipped)
• tech (string): The technology used in the project. Options include:
  • hugo
  • drupal
  • symfony

Configuring additional software to be added

The additional_packages variable allows additional software to be included in the main build. It is intended for smaller packages that do not require customisation. If more software with significant customisation is needed consider to open a pull request.

Configuring Vagrant

Devbox offers a complete development environment out of the box. Vagrant is controled through a Vagrantfile bunlded at the root of the repository. Within that file there are parameters about:

• vagrant options about the base image, synchronising folders, network, etc
• virtual machine options about memory, etc
• provision options about ansible

Please follow through vagrant documentation for a more thorough understanding of how it can be tweaked.

Usage

Using Vagrant

To connect to the VM use the following:

vagrant ssh

For changes in config.yml to take effect use:

vagrant provision

For changes in Vagrantfile to take effect vagrant configuration need to be roloaded:

varnish reload

Access help via:

vagrant help

Accessing projects

Devbox listens to a private network with IP set to 10.10.10.10. Add an entry per project in your /etc/hosts file:

10.10.10.10    PROJECT_DOMAIN

Then point your browser to the domain in port 8000:

http://PROJECT_DOMAIN

You should see the homepage of your project.

Contributions

Everyone is welcome to contribute. The most established way to do so in github is to fork a project and create a pull request. Read this post on how to use pull requests on github.

Credits

This code is developed and maintained by Tassos Koutlas for the Ioannina FOSS Unit of Excellence (ioa-maellak).

The code is distributed under the EUPL v1.1 open source software license.