The whole kit and caboodle: OXID Developer VM available as a unified development environment

Today we reach out to inform you that we proudly published OXID Developer VM. This Vagrant/Ansible based virtual machine setup comes along with a stack of scripts and configuration files that will let you set up a virtual machine including the most important SDK elements (formerly scattered in some different places) plus our Testing Library within minutes. Our aim was to create an easy to set up, consistent and standardized development environment for all developers to work with OXID eShop, SDK and tests.

Out of the box, a virtual machine with the following components will be installed:
 

• LAMP stack (PHP 5.5, MySQL 5.5 on Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty, LTS, server edition). The Ubuntu version can be changed by defining a different base box name for Vagrant.
• Xdebug extension is installed and enabled
• Zend Guard Loader compatible
• Composer is pre-installed globally
• Varnish (frontend caching, for OXID eShop Enterprise packages including the performance option, available for easy installation just by switching it on)
• Selenium
• latest OXID eShop CE code base from GitHub (it is also possible to just place your own existing OXID eShop package)
• OXID SDK components: Testing Library, OXID Module Skeleton Generator, OXID Module Certification Tools

Oracle VirtualBox can be used as a safe multi-platform solution to build up the development environment for all major operating systems, but keep in mind that there are also platform specific solutions (e.g. Parallels for OS X or LXC for GNU/Linux) which allow to get almost 1:1 performance compared to the host or even to not use the para-virtualization at all (usage of containers).
We are aware of synchronization (folder sharing) problems by using the solution on Windows; this is an issue we’re still working on to resolve.
Currently we do not provide integration examples with VMWare Fusion/Workstation but it could be provided in case there will be an interest/request from the users.

Please check out the README file on GitHub for learning to install and work with OXID Developer VM: https://github.com/OXID-eSales/oxvm_eshop/

Future plans for the development environment includes (but is not limited to):
 

• ability to use OXID developer VM on Windows without synchronization/sharing problems
• ability to switch the PHP version
• include a tool to work with SQL DB (Adminer/PHPMyAdmin)
• include a tool to work with e-mails (MailCatcher/MailHog)

The OXID Developer VM is licensed under the terms of the LGPL. This means you may fork and help improving it with pull requests and issues, or even use it for any other (PHP) project. Looking forward to hear your success stories!

Oh by the way: you’re intrigued to know how to get this development environment productive, how to connect it to your IDE, how to test your own modules with the latest shop versions? There will be workshops during the upcoming Partner Day on October 29th. Stay tuned for more information!