How to replicate my WordPress/Symfony local development environment on MacOS

As a part of my job, I develop custom WordPress plugins and themes. The other part of my job is to develop applications using Symfony, so for me is crucial to have a development environment that supports both my activities without compromises. I’ve found my perfect balance using these tools:

• Homebrew
• Composer
• Laravel Valet
• Xdebug
• MailHog
• PHP CodeSniffer
• WP CLI
• Symfony
• PHPStorm

I will avoid to explain what are these tools, but I have added the links to let you go directly to each website.

The easy part with Homebrew

Using Homebrew I can install pretty everything, except for the Symfony binary. If it can be useful to you, here is my Brewfile (search for “brew bundle”, it is an easy way to let Homebrew know what to install following a list into a file).

tap "exolnet/deprecated"
tap "garethlawson/php"
brew "node"
brew "composer"
brew "dnsmasq", restart_service: true
brew "git"
brew "imagemagick"
brew "mailhog", restart_service: true
brew "mysql@5.7", restart_service: true, link: true
brew "nginx", restart_service: true
brew "php", link: false
brew "php-code-sniffer"
brew "php@7.2", restart_service: true, link: true
brew "php@7.3"
brew "pkg-config"
brew "postgresql"
brew "wp-cli"
brew "exolnet/deprecated/php@7.0"
brew "exolnet/deprecated/php@7.1"

So let’s start and install PHP, Composer and Laravel Valet following the guide on the Valet website

When it’s time to install the database you can continue to follow the guide or, for example, you can install in the same manner PostgreSql.

If you know that you are going to develop on WordPress multisites, you need to add to Valet a custom driver to manage the multisite: I’m currently using this and it has never failed, just follow the one-line instruction on top for installation

Continuing with the things you can install with Homebrew, proceed installing Mailhog, PHP Code Sniffer and WP CLI.
This is also the moment when I install the Symfony binary.

You can test Valet, WP CLI and the database, but not the others. Now it’s time to finish some configurations.

Finishing the configuration of PHP Code Sniffer

PHP Code Sniffer needs to have the sniffs configured. It come with a basic set of sniffs, but you can add the WordPress ones following the documentation here (I prefer the standalone version)
Depending on your IDE setup, you would have to setup all from the command line, or you can have your IDE to manage the sniffs. In my case, with PHPStorm I need only to setup the PHP Code Sniffer path and the rules to follow at the beginning of the project.

Tweaking Valet

After 2 years I’ve collected 2 setups to apply to the servers: more timeout for MySQL and more timeout for Valet.

For MySQL, add these rows in the file /usr/local/etc/my.cnf (and tweak them to your use cases)

interactive_timeout = 1000
wait_timeout = 1000
max_allowed_packet=160M

For Valet follow this guide

Manage a lot of PHP versions

I develop on a lot of different applications, and I need all the PHP minor versions of the 7. I have found how to install them via Homebrew (look at my Brewfile), and I need that the PHP version used by the web server is the same used by the command line. To achieve that, I have my precious .zshrc file to setup the global PATH:

export VALET_PHP_70="/usr/local/Cellar/php@7.0/7.0.33/bin/"
export VALET_PHP_71="/usr/local/Cellar/php@7.1/7.1.33/bin/"
export VALET_PHP_72="/usr/local/Cellar/php@7.2/7.2.32/bin/"
export VALET_PHP_73="/usr/local/Cellar/php@7.3/7.3.23/bin/"
export VALET_PHP_74="/usr/local/Cellar/php/7.4.11/bin/"
export BREW_MYSQL="/usr/local/opt/mysql@5.7/bin"
export COMPOSER_PATH="$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin"
export SYMFONY="$HOME/.symfony/bin"
export PATH="$VALET_PHP_72:$BREW_MYSQL:$COMPOSER_PATH:$SYMFONY:$PATH"

Every time I change the version with Valet, I also link into the operating system’s path the right PHP version. As you can see, when I picked both the Brewfile and the .zshrc file I was working with PHP 7.2, and there is also the Symfony binary path.

Install XDebug

I have always looked at the installation of XDebug like a pain, but frankly with this environment it is not. Just remember that if you (like me) need more PHP versions ready to work, you will have to repeat these steps for each version you linked in the $PATH into the .zshrc

First, instal XDebug with pecl:

pecl install xdebug

Then into the folder /usr/local/etc/php/[YOUR PHP VERSION]/conf.d put a new ini file, let’s call it xdebug.ini with the configurations to run it, for example mine is:

xdebug.remote_enable=1
xdebug.remote_host=127.0.0.1
xdebug.remote_port=9000
xdebug.remote_autostart=1
# I don't use anymore this last line, but I keep it in case of need
xdebug.idekey="PHPSTORM"

…and that’s it. On PHPStorm I just check the XDebug port and hit the debug icon of the telephone.

Configure Mailhog

Knowing that you are already here (/usr/local/etc/php/[YOUR PHP VERSION]/conf.d) put another new .ini file, call it mailhog.ini and add into it this line without changing anything (except the Mailhog version if needed):

sendmail_path = /usr/local/Cellar/mailhog/1.0.0/bin/MailHog sendmail test@test

Install Image Magick

If you need it, you have already installed something with Homebrew (see the Brewfile, there is pkg-config and imagemagick). If you don’t need it you can remove them from the installation with Homebrew, but if you need it you have to continue the installation with:

pecl install imagick

As you have done for XDebug, this command needs also to be run for each PHP version you want to use.

Conclusion

If you have read this article untill here…well, thank you! Let me know: what are you using for your local development environment? And what do you think I can change to improve mine?