A simple GUI to set up virtual machines for PHP development | Hacker News Reader

A simple GUI to set up virtual machines for PHP development

puphpet.com

103 pointsmerinid19 comments

Hi all, author of PuPHPet here.

1. I don't know how to pronounce it. I usually try to say "puff-pet" and look like an idiot while doing so.

2. I started learning Vagrant/Puppet a few months ago. Puppet is powerful, but has "gotchas" that felt like I was continuously bashing my head against the wall. I didn't want other people to go through the same frustration, so I decided to add buttons. Developers love buttons!

3. Some of the goals of PuPHPet are to

a) make tools like (X|W|M)AMP obsolete,

b) show developers the benefits of VM development (especially PHP developers),

and c) provide quickstart setups for popular projects (https://puphpet.com/quickstart/symfony , https://puphpet.com/quickstart/puphpet).

Possibly even d) setup an API to allow people to POST their config requirements and get back a link to a generated zip file, without needing to use the GUI itself. I could use some help on that front: https://github.com/puphpet/puphpet/issues/100

Great work. What I find though is that a lot of WAMP/LAMP developers don't understand all these. You can add tremendous value to your Project by adding a few notes as to what are all the components and how do they fit together.

I've found that these sort of tools are more likely to take hold in ecosystems where command line actions and easy configuration tend to be common-place. I authored a Vagrant setup for Railo (open source version of Adobe ColdFusion) - http://github.com/bdcravens/railo-vagrant (not that great, haven't put much time into it - other contributors have really done more with it than I), but I haven't heard of much uptake of this or others using Vagrant in the ColdFusion community.

I've been pronouncing it Puffet, and just ignoring the second P, because otherwise it sounds kind of silly. It's so awesome though, great job!

Thanks for making this!

I'm wondering if you would mind elaborating on the choice of Silex over the other options out there. I've been playing a bit in this realm and would be glad to know how you came to that decision.

Thanks again

I'm a huge Silex nerd because it comes with the very minimum needed to be a productive framework.

It implements a proper DIC, routing and quick ways to set up outside libraries (providers).

It comes with only what you need to get started, nothing you don't, but when you want to add more it doesn't get in your way.

I upgraded my development environment to VM just 2 months ago. I'm still configuring VM by myself bu i admire your work. i just wanted to congratulate you. thanks for your work.

An interactive command line application that I can just run on my box might be more useful than an API.

My suggestion would be to offer an nginx + php-fpm configuration as well.

Look closer, it's already done :)

https://puphpet.com/#webserver

You can also choose PostegreSQL

https://puphpet.com/#database

There's not a single reply bashing PHP here yet. This means that you did something good (and I totally agree!)

Ok, this is awesome. A neat GUI interface over generating both Vagrantfiles and Puppet manifests by hand?! So nice.

Slick UI + the fact that it generates this standard DevOps setup (Vagrant + Puppet) instead of trying to reinvent that particular wheel... so cool.

Absolutely brilliant. I've been putting off doing this type of setup myself for ages, can't wait to play with it!

when i saw the link i was like 'not another one'

but the site is neat. i wouldnt call it a GUI tho, it makes it sound like another app i need to install.

And i agree with the comment that it should be cli. that would be really neat.

This would be awesome if it also worked for Node.JS/Python/Ruby/etc. I recently switched to a Vagrant/Puppet system but there aren't too many good recipes with good documentation. This makes those two things obselete.

You can install those other languages, here: https://puphpet.com/#server

I have it on my list to expand out to other languages and offer in-depth configuration options just like PHP does. Unfortunately I am not familiar with any of them to be able to confidently say I am following best practices, or even know what options developers want to choose!

Opening a github issue and outlining what exactly you'd like to see would go a very long way to reaching that goal.

This also helps me explain the full stack to my dev team.

Wow, looks very nice. We're in the process of moving our php development over to VMs, this will be useful.

I was looking for an option to dump x/wamp setup. This is encouraging me to do that right now.

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