Development Server for LAMP Environment

How to set up dedicated development server for team of PHP developers

Using developer’s station

Pros• Always available

Cons• Big time efforts for new team member to set up environment• Environment not consistent• Too complex to use additional software under Windows or Mac

operation systems• Not possible to share results

Using virtual machine

Pros• More-less consistent environment

Cons• Hard to maintain for junior and regular developers• Hard to synchronize environment changes between team• Use resources of developer’s station• Not possible to share results

Using Vagrant

Pros• Consistent environment

Cons• Not of all software can be configured• Additional complexity for developers to support vagrant configuration• Use resources of developer’s machine• Not possible to share results

Using development server

Pros• Consistent environment for everyone• New team member doesn’t required to set up environment• Results can be shared to everyone using company’s DNS (or hosts file)• Ability to work remotely without hard dependency of environment• High available editors VIM, Emacs, Cloud9 IDE

Cons• Single point of failure

FTP based development server

Pros• Simple to set up

Cons• No sandbox• No isolations

Apache2 virtual hosts based development serverPros• Separated by virtual host

Cons • Hard to set up new virtual hosts

Linux users based development serverPros• Sandbox for every user• No restrictions with virtual hosts

Cons• Relatively hard to set up

Mass virtual hosting

URL: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/mass.html

Project URLs: http://<project>.<developer>.dev.example.comMapped path: /home/<developer>/vhosts/<project>

Multiple php5 evnironment

Multiple php5 environment

1. Main apache2 listen 80 port2. Proxy php5x.<project>.<developer>.dev.example.com to

apache2:8x instance

User environment

mod_macro: http://people.apache.org/~fabien/mod_macro

error_logXdebug configurationMysql default user

Links

• http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html• http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/mass.html• http://people.apache.org/~fabien/mod_macro/• http://www.tin.org/bin/man.cgi?section=8&topic=update-rc.d

• mailto:andrei_stsiapanau@epam.com