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Devcontainers or local Codespaces with optimizations for PHP and Nodejs development.

Develop Laravel, Symfony, NestJS, SailsJS, WordPress, Drupal, Magento, Prestashop, Opencart project with any NodeJS and PHP version.

Getting started:

Download a zip of this repo (clone only for contributions).

Rename the directory with something suitable for your project (will be used by docker as a namespace!)

Change name in .devcontainer/devcontainer.json for your project. (This will keep your projects storage isolated between them)

IMPORTANT

Set the exact tag you want for the 16nsk/devcontainers image in docker-compose.yml Examples:

• 16nsk/devcontainers:8.0-16 will run latest image with PHP 8.0 and NodeJS 16.x
• 16nsk/devcontainers:7.4-14 will run latest image with PHP 7.4 and NodeJS 14.x

The versions matrix currently is:

PHP	NodeJS
8.0	16.x
7.4	14.x
7.3	12.x

If you want different versions, you can build locally the image passing expected arguments like: docker-compose build --build-arg PHP_VERSION=7.4 --build-arg NODE_VERSION=12 --pull

Uncomment/add needed services in docker-compose.yml. Tweak the cpu and memory limits to your needs. The defaults are sensible enough for Laravel, Drupal, Magento, Prestashop on medium to large applications. I've provided them, as I sometimes had problems when using multiple databases and an elasticsearch instance at same time on 16GB of ram.

Do not change the docker-compose.yml version to 3.x, unless you run SWARM locally, in which case you need to change resource limits to new syntax. Using 3.x would have complicated resource limitations, as most people do not enable SWARM locally.

You need to have Docker installed and working on your computer, remote can also be used, this setup does not use local volume binds.

A note on remote docker: Windows and MacOS Docker, probably not wanted by who want to run Visual Studio Code on a light computer and connect to a monster server, so you should look to install docker-cli using Chocolatey on Windows and Brew on MacOS. Make sure docker-compose is installed!

One time: Generate your ssh key, but follow next for ssh-agent.

Follow the ssh integration help Using ssh keys. VSCode will automatically use ssh keys if were previously generated locally and are available. (this is nice, as VSCode automates usage of your git and ssh stuff and you do not have to do it on each new project)

Optional: Setup git in your host machine and set all global configuration (Like your name, email, gpg etc.). Visual Studio Code will synchronise them with any project you will work using this.

Open it in Visual Studio Code.

One time: Install the remote containers extension if you do not have it yet.

Optional: Install Git and make Identity config.

Enjoy :)

Optional: To use Prettier with php once you have your project setup, run npm install --save-dev prettier @prettier/plugin-php to install the php plugin for the extension to consume it. Config your settings as you like.

Add another related project/folder to the workspace: in /projects create a folder for the additional project and add this folder to the workspace in Visual Studio Code like you do for local. I use this setup to have the frontend main client in the main /projects/workspace folder and /projects/api for the api as an example.

Advanced extra settings: Once a project has been initiated, the developer user folder is mounted as a docker volume. If you need to make changes in the configuration of devcontainer that should change the workspace, possible you might need to close the project, remove main container and the user volume. I usually did workspace settings changes or added new extensions in Visual Studio Code, and added them also in the devcontainer json file and did not need to remove the use volume for recreation. Changing the docker compose recipe requires only triggering a rebuild in Visual Studio Code from the remote extension options (click on bottom left icon of it and choose to rebuild).

PS. Turn off services that might use 8000, 8080, 3000, 3306 or other ports on your local. This are needed for Docker to map ports in the containers. Or disable/change them in docker-compose.yml (left value is host to change, right is inside container - do not change the right one if unsure what you do), VSCode will ask you to open a new random port when you start a development server.

Examples

(after you have started it) Start Visual Studio Code's terminal.

Start a new Laravel project: composer create-project laravel/laravel . This will generate a new project in the workspace.

Edit .env to access the database at host mariadb, user and password developer or whatever database you have set in docker compose file.

When you serve, pass --host=0.0.0.0. App will be accessible at http://127.0.0.1:8000 in your browser. Tip: For Laravel, add this gist to /app/console/commands/ServeCommand.php and just run artisan serve.

Clone the project in the workspace git clone [git-repo] ..

Use git, edit as expected, use debug for php, nodejs etc. Workspace settings for debugging should be saved in the project (I usually save them to the project's git repo, as all team members use identical setup and there is no need for different settings).