DrupalStand Development Environment

The DrupalStand project is an opinionated local development environment built around the concept of simplicity, transparency, expandability, and an exceptionally low barrier to entry. Built on docker, the DrupalStand project should function identically on all* host systems capable of running docker images.

Cloning this repository will give you a stock Drupal development site running in docker containers. GNU Make commands assist in setup, management, and cleanup. Additional commands can be easily added into the system to satisfy independent project needs.

Files are synced locally allowing you to do local development work using the tools and functionality you and your developers are most comfortable with. A single codebase houses all of the code needed to replicate an entire Drupal environment identically on multiple machines with no configuration needed.

While focused on development tasks, the project also offers some production deployment tools to ease the transition of a local codebase into a production ready deployment. These tools prepare specially formulated containers with production in mind and export them into standalone images that can be deployed into orchestration environments or spun up as standalone servers.

Requirements

MacOS, Linux, or Windows with Docker ToolBox

Support for native Windows systems is coming soon.

Docker (https://www.docker.com/products/overview)

On systems that don't ship with docker-compose (Linux), it should also be installed.

GNU Make (https://www.gnu.org/software/make/)

Usage

Once docker has been installed, the environment can be brought right up:

make init

This command could take a long time if this is the first time you're running it. Multiple versions of this environment on the same machine (or repeat builds) will utilize image caching to build faster subsequent times.

The init command runs through almost all of the available individual commands and will result in an environment ready to work with. The environment can be accessed via https://localhost:8443. MySQL and memcached are also accessible on their default ports (3306 and 11211, respectively).

The Makefile contains many additional commands that can be individually executed to perform certain actions on a case by case basis:

make [command]

• help Show available commands in the make file along with descriptions.
• init-drupal Meta command to execute drupal-install config-init config-import clear-cache.
• update Meta command to execute docker-stop composer-install docker-rebuild config-import clear-cache. Use this command after a git pull has been performed to ensure that infrastructure and configuration match the repository. This will destroy any uncommitted Drupal configuration.
• safe-update Meta command to execute docker-stop composer-install docker-rebuild clear-cache. Use this command after a git pull has been performed to ensure that infrastructure matches the repository. This will not overwrite Drupal configuration.
• docker-rebuild Rebuilds the docker containers from build files.
• docker-status Prints the status of docker.
• docker-start Brings up the docker environment and displays status.
• docker-stop Brings down the docker environment.
• docker-restart Meta command to run docker-stop and docker-start.
• composer-install Runs composer install against root composer.json.
• composer-upgrade Runs composer upgrade against root composer.json. This will upgrade all files tracked by composer. Use with caution. To only upgrade Drupal core, use drupal-upgrade.
• drupal-upgrade Updates Drupal core.
• drupal-install Executes a drush based site install.
• config-init Sets UUID of the system config to the UUID of the newly created Drupal site. This is necessary to bring configuration data between environments without bringing the database along at the same time. Configuration should be in ./config.
• config-import Imports the configuration data into Drupal. This will fail if config-init has not been run first. Configuration should be in ./config.
• config-export Exports config out of Drupal into ./config.
• config-validate Verifies config before import.
• config-refresh Meta command to execute config-init config-import.
• clear-cache Executes a drush based cache rebuild.
• destroy Brings down the docker environment, removes the database, and deletes Drupal's files. Depending on configuration, this command may need to be executed as root.
• rebuild Meta command to execute destroy init. Depending on configuration, this command may need to be executed as root.
• lint Tests custom modules and themes against PHP Parallel Lint.
• sniff Tests custom modules and themes against Drupal coding standards and best practices using PHP CodeSniffer.
• code-test Meta command to execute lint sniff.
• code-fix Automatically fixes some errors identified via code-test utilizing functionality built into PHP CodeSniffer via PHP Code Beautifier and Fixer.
• fix-permissions Sets appropriate permissions in the working directory ensuring that the current user is able to edit files.
• shell Opens a shell in the specified container as root.

Details

• Docker-compose is building the environment with off the shelf components. The official images from the PHP, MySQL, and memcache teams are used. Some modifications are made to the base images to enable things such as out of the box SSL encryption and XDebug configuration.
• Data for databases will be maintained through docker reboots as long as the "database" volume is not deleted manually or with the "-v" option on docker-compose down.
• This repository does track a composer.lock file meaning that versions of software installed are the ones that match the lock file. Currently this repository tracks the base installation provided by the drupal-composer/drupal-project with Drupal 8.5.4. You can upgrade with make drupal-upgrade or wait until this repository is updated. Certain files such as those provided by the Drupal scaffolding project may be subject to manipulation and may or may not upgrade cleanly. The default location for the hosted content in this project was moved from the default of /web to /webroot to make this directories purpose more clear.
• The Drupal site installed by default is configured with the "minimal" profile which has absolutely zero configuration out of the box. This environment, however, ships with a small amount of configuration that sets up blocks and themes similar to a "standard" Drupal installation. If you want to start with less (which might be preferable if a project is planning on building an entire theme from scratch), delete all of the configuration files found in /config. If you do not import config, the site will be setup with the "Stark" theme. The installation profile used can be set in the Makefile under the drupal-install target, however, if you use any configuration, it's recommended that you leave it "minimal" to avoid conflicts in the future.
• This repository uses a local.settings.php development file. It is included automatically if the file exists. If this code base is used in production, ensure that there is a deployment process in place to remove this file before going live. This could be an outright removal or it could be something like a switch to determine your environment.

Drush/Drupal Console

Custom implementations for drush and the Drupal Console have been created to allow communication with these tools inside the running instances. You can execute commands using bin/drush and bin/drupal. These commands are special scripts that work with the drush and drupal installed by Composer but from the inside of your docker container so that they can access your environments running resources.

Additional scripts exist in the event that you want to use XDebug with drush or Drupal Console. To execute these, place breakpoints in your local code and run your commands with bin/drush-debug or bin/drupal-debug. Some additional configuration in your IDE or debugging environment may be required.

Composer

Similar to the drush and Drupal scripts, this project provides a custom implementation of Composer that can be executed with bin/composer. This is done to eliminate the need for a local Composer (and further PHP) install as well as to ensure that the same versions is used consistently between environments.

If installed and configured, a local Composer installation could continue to be used to manage the environment, but any files created by bin/composer (including the original system initialization), will be permission locked and might require running make fix-permissions to rectify the problem.

Additional Tools

Lastly, this project ships with bin/tool and bin/host-tool. These are scripts that exist to forward your input commands into docker space. Explicitly, bin/tool executes any command passed to it on the running PHP container. bin/host-tool executes commands passed to it in a new container that has the entire project folder mounted into it. The former is useful for debugging a live environment, the latter for manipulation while an environment is offline. In practice, neither of these will be directly used very often by developers.

Production Export

Standard Production

In order to bring a site developed in this project to production, the entire code base can be cloned down to the production server. Ensure the following steps are met:

1. Point the web server (apache, nginx, etc) to webroot in your project
   • This directory contains Drupal and everything the web server needs -- do not serve the entire project directory!
2. Set environment variables or modify settings.php for the database
   • Environment variables required to work are MYSQL_DATABASE, MYSQL_USER, MYSQL_PASSWORD, and DRUPAL_MYSQL_HOST
3. If necessary, remove settings.local.php
   • It is recommended that additional, programmatic logic is setup to ensure this is removed automatically -- leaving this file in your production environment is a liability at worst and a performance hit at minimum

Docker Production

If your production environment is based on docker, you can prepare an image of the current codebase:

1. make export-prod

In the process that follows the running of the command, docker will create new images based on a similar base to the development images with a few exceptions:

• Composer-managed files such as vendor, core, and modules will be pulled in from a sterile environment. This is to ensure that no hacking of these libraries accidentally makes it into the environment. Permanent hacks to libraries managed by Composer should be managed using Composer Patches.
• Composer installs without development dependencies. It is essential that Drupal's configuration is expecting this. If modules, such as Devel, are tracked as a Composer development dependency, Drupal will throw errors about not being able to find the Devel files if it still expects, because of configuration, for the module to be there. The Configuration Split module is excellent for this purpose.
• Debugging tools such as XDebug are not available

Tarball images for each of the PHP, Web, and Database containers will be saved into the root of the project directory. These images can be deployed using standard orchestration layers or manually if the environment is configured for it.

Development Workflow

This environment contains most tools needed to perform day-to-day development activities, but some steps and make targets might be vague. These are some of the common use cases and how the environment can be used to satisfy them.

Initialization

To begin work, clone the repository. Once the repository is cloned and the prerequisites are met (Composer and docker installed locally), a single command can be used to initialize the environment:

1. make init

The environment will go through many steps and should leave you with a working Drupal installation. You should be able to access the site at https://localhost:8443.

Destruction

If an environment becomes unstable, or you wish to start again with a fresh environment straight from your code base, consider destroying the environment. A destroy will erase all content in your local site, so be sure there are no configuration items or content assets you wish to preserve.

1. make destroy

A more advanced target, clean, will run a destroy plus remove any created or cached docker images. This effectively reverts your environment to a pre-development environment state.

Rebuild

If you wish to do a destroy and an initialization in the same command, a command exists to merge these steps together:

1. make rebuild

This will perform the actions of make destoy followed by make init.

Stopping/Starting An Environment

Environments can be stopped and frozen for later use. This can be useful if resources need to be opened up. Stopping an environment will not destroy any of the content or configuration in the environment.

1. make docker-stop

In a similar fashion, the environment can be restarted:

1. make docker-start

Once the environment has started, the site should again be reachable. These commands will be rarely used in day-to-day development.

Installing A Composer Library

Composer is used to manage all PHP packages tracked by the environment. It is used for libraries as well as other PHP packages. By default, installed Composer packages install to the /vendor directory. Special packages (such as Drupal modules) may be installed to different directories.

This is an example adding PHP Code Sniffer to your environment.

1. bin/composer require squizlabs/php_codesniffer
2. git add composer.json composer.lock
3. git commit -m "Added PHP_CodeSniffer to environment."

Note that the files downloaded by Composer and placed in /vendor are not tracked in your SCM and shouldn't be added manually. The composer.json and composer.lock files contain enough information for other environments to obtain the exact same code the next time their environments are built.

Installing A Drupal Module

Composer is also used to install Drupal modules, themes, profiles, and libraries. The end directory for these packages varies depending on the type of package being required, however, like the /vendor directory, these directories are ignored in git and should not be added to your SCM.

This is an example adding Webform to your environment and activating it.

1. bin/composer require drupal/webform
2. bin/drush en webform
3. make config-export
4. git add composer.json composer.lock config/core.extension.yml
5. git commit -m "Added Drupal Webform to environment."

These steps are similar to a normal Composer package, but the environment needs to be aware that Drupal has a module to enable. After it's installed, it is enabled using drush. After it has been enabled, Drupal's configuration is exported. In this example, there was no configuration of the module after the installation, but be mindful that there might be additional configuration files to add after a module has been enabled. Lastly, this configuration, along with the composer.json and composer.lock files, are added to the code management.

Creating Custom Code

If a custom module or theme is needed, the Drupal Console will help facilitate creating the boilerplate for these items. The manual for Drupal Console can be helpful during these steps. The console can also be used to create boilerplate for existing modules and plugins.

This is an example creating a module called "Example Module":

1. bin/drupal generate:module --module "Example Module"
   • The Drupal Console will confirm a few bits of information
2. git add web/modules/custom/example_module
3. git commit -m "Created a new module, Example Module"

The code that comes out of this generation will be owned by the root user which often means it will not be editable. Consider running the make fix-permissions command after creation to rectify this and edit locally.

Exporting Configuration

Drupal ships with an extensive configuration tracking interface known as CMI. Configuration for almost everything can be exported and is tracked in flat yaml files stored in /config. The environment will automatically import these configuration files during a make init or make update target.

It is important to validate that the configuration exported is the configuration that you were expecting to export:

1. make config-validate

This command will list out all of the configuration files inside the /config directory that are different than configuration in Drupal. If the configuration that is listed reflects the changes you have made, then it is safe to export the configuration and commit the results.

This is an example changing the theme of the site:

1. bin/drush config-set system.theme default bartik
2. make config-validate
   • Ensure that the output of this contains only related configuration.
3. make config-export
4. git add /config
5. git commit -m "Set Bartik theme as default."

In this example, the configuration modified was done from drush, but almost all configuration done in the interface will also be tracked this way. Keep the configuration commits simple and often. Be mindful the quantity of files can become very large very quickly.

Note that all configuration that does not match what is in the /config directory will be exported. This does not mean that all of it needs to be committed. In the example above, the /config directory is blanket added to git but this might not always be the case. Take care to only commit what is necessary to the work at hand.

The cleanest and most effective way to modify configuration for the site is to commit each configuration change as it is performed:

1. Make a single change (or related set of changes) to Drupal
2. Validate and export configuration
3. Add and commit exported configuration to SCM
4. Repeat for other changes

Updating Code

When working with a team, upstream code will often be newer than local code. In order to keep the environment up to date, there are a few commands to facilitate this depending on the situation and the current state of the environment.

If an environment has no uncommitted configuration or code changes in it, the make update command should be used:

1. git status
   • Ensure the environment is clean
2. git pull
3. make update

This command will update the infrastructure, install/update packages, and reset Drupal's configuration to the configuration tracked in code.

If an environment has uncommitted work in it, caution should be taken when updating to ensure there are no conflicts. The make safe-update command exists for this purpose:

1. git pull
2. make safe-update

This command will update the infrastructure and install/update packages, but will not touch Drupal's configuration. This will help preserve any work currently being done in the environment.

When possible, update during a state of clean development. Between the two commands, make update should be used much more often.

Problems With Permissions

The environment runs in two different fashions concurrently: locally and in Docker containers. Due to the nature of Docker containers, most items created inside these containers are owned by the user running the services inside the container. This user is usually root.

While this is good for ensuring very little has to be done inside the container, it adds a challenge to modifying files that often sync between the container and the local environment. These could be files such as settings.php or files touched by drush or Drupal Console.

Permission errors will typically be encountered during two different common operations:

1. Editing files that were created inside the container
2. Checking out code (changing branches or resetting files)

If permission errors are ever encountered, they can be rectified by running a single command:

1. make fix-permissions

If the environment contains a large amount of files, this command could take a while, but when it's done, there should be no more problems.

TODO

• Integrate the option for other Docker-based containers to assist with specific tasks such as ElasticSearch.