When working on Windows it might be challenging to find or setup a good dev environment or project that requires stack like LAMP. This tutorial will show you how to quickly setup a full virtual machine containing all you need for your lamp stack.

Why not XAMPP?

  • Shipped with its unchangeable php version
  • Hard to work on multiple projects requiring different php version
  • Every devs don’t share the same dev env
  • Cant be share/distribute between devs
  • xdebug act very weird on xampp sometime

Requirements

You need multiple tools on your machine

  • VirtualBox( preferred) but can work with VMware too (https://www.virtualbox.org/)
  • Vagrant (which is a wrapper to virtual box/vmware) https://www.vagrantup.com/
  • HeidiSQL* (free mysql client not as heavy as workbench) https://www.heidisql.com/download.php
  • Git* (https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git)
  • Putty (https://www.putty.org/) *optional

What it will give you? Ability to download and launch on the fly different machines containing all the environment you need pre-setup

For example on my machine right now I have two boxes (LAMP env)

img

Warning: Before you start make sure you shut down any running instance of XAMPP

This tuto is using scotch/box because it appears to be the most downloaded and easy one to setup

img

Steps:

  • Install all the tools above
  • Create a folder where you are going to put work on your project (ex: c:\MyPhpProjects)
  • Navigate to that folder via cmd and enter the following command (my project being the name of the project ex: learnsphere)
git clone https://github.com/scotch-io/scotch-box my-project
  • Navigate into your new folder

img

vagrant up

  • This should take a little while (it actually download the box for you and starting it)

  • To have any real-time feedback you can open your virtual box and you should see your machine being added and running

  • real-time

  • If everything works you should be able to navigate to http://192.168.33.10

  • You have now a full LAMP/LEMP stack running on your machine
  • Navigate to your folder and you will see different docs and config files (all your project files goes into public you will work into that)

code-location

Connection to MySQL

Step

  • Open HeidiSQl (indicate your putty path for ssh)

heidiSql

  • db-info

Then you can create db and do whatever you want

dbs-list

Useful links: https://box.scotch.io/docs/ (box the tuto was based from) https://app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search (all the possible boxes available to us) https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/cli/ (vagrant command)