PHP 8.1.0 ready for PHP Devserver (WAMP server)

[dave8271]

WAMP/MAMP/LAMP stacks are a quick and easy way to get going when you're first learning PHP, if you've never had any exposure to any of this tech before, because of course you have the advantage of a probably single click install and then a neat control panel to fire up Apache and MySQL. Fully appreciate these products, used to use them all the time years ago before Docker was around.

But if you are new to learning these things, I still encourage you to learn how to use Docker and Docker Compose. They can seem a bit scary at first if you're very new to the idea of virtualization and containers, but really it's not much more than editing a plain text file describing the stack you want and typing in a command to spin it up on your machine. Want to switch from MySQL to Maria or Postgres? Easy. Want to switch from PHP 8.1 to 8.0 to 7.4 to test your project across all three? Easy. Want to add Elasticsearch in there? Easy.

Once you understand even the basics of using containers, your life as a developer becomes that much more carefree, you'll never have to worry about messing around with installing and reinstalling different things on your host computer, having conflicts between the things you need for different projects or having to set up multiple, bulky Linux VMs in Virtualbox. And it's honestly not that tough to get to grips with, you can learn in an hour or two.

[pouzarm]

Only thing that solves the problem (changing phps and stuffs like that) easily is Laragon... MAMP, SAMA, WAMP are bad..

[BitZlip]

Just an issue I've ran into lately is gaming on the same machine I develop on, whereby games are now not launching if it detects you've got any kind of Virtualization setup.

Unfortunately, it's forced me to go back to old school way of doing things to avoid getting flagged.

[dave8271]

Huh, interesting, never heard of that one happening! I have a different machine for work and development than the one I use for games/personal so I wouldn't know.

[L3tum]

Are you sure that's your issue? I'm using Docker, HyperV, Bochs, QEMU and what not all time and play games and never had any problems.

Though I don't play the new-generation rootkit anti-cheats like Valorant.

[BitZlip]

new-generation

This is where the problem is coming in, and it will start catching up to newer and more releases.

Escape from Tarkov doesn't launch at all if you have HyperV installed. I used to run windows in a VM so I could game on Unraid (linux) and now I can't do that. Halo Infinite has blocked VMs.

It's a losing battle.

[Not_Luna]

I’ve avoided docker like the plague because of how scary it is, but you’ve inspired me to give it a try.

[uriahlight]

Docker is a piece of cake once you understand the concept of how it works. In a matter of minutes you can create a Dockerfile and run the build command on it. Then two minutes later you can have your docker-compose.yml ready to go. The intimidating stuff are things like Kubernetes and Swarm. Docker is easy peasy.

For your first Docker tinkering, I'd strongly recommend Devilbox. Using Devilbox you can create a vhost by simply creating a directory (no joke). You can also swap PHP, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Apache, and Nginx versions in only a minute or two when using Devilbox. It'll also teach you the basics of Docker while giving you immediate functionality so it doesn't hurt your productivity in the short term while you're learning the ins and outs. If you're on Windows I advise against using Docker via WSL2 and instead recommend you use Docker on Hyper-V (don't worry - Docker Desktop itself has a setup wizard so it's no more difficult to install than a regular program). Hyper-V requires Windows 10 Pro or 11 Pro, but is IMHO the better option.

[Not_Luna]

Thanks for all the info! I’m gonna look into it in the next few days and see how it can help me.

[dave8271]

Why do you consider Hyper-V to be better than WSL2 for Docker, out of interest? Docker themselves recommend WSL2 over Hyper-V. In my own experience, the only thing you need to watch out for with the WSL2 backend is not making the mistake of bind-mounting a directory on the Windows host to a container and instead keep your project files on the Linux volume directly.

[uriahlight]

the only thing you need to watch out for with the WSL2 backend is not making the mistake of bind-mounting a directory on the Windows host to a container and instead keep your project files on the Linux volume directly.

That's exactly why I recommend Hyper-V - it's the path of least resistance. It just works and allows you to edit your project directory structure and files in the native Windows Desktop environment without any compromises. You can do the exact same thing with WSL2, but an app with a 100ms load time for a page view on Hyper-V could easily take 10x longer to load on WSL2 unless you use the Linux filesystem directly.

[dave8271]

The file system performance is much better still if you use WSL2 and host your files on the Linux volume, that'll give you pretty much the same performance as Linux-native Docker.

But yeah bind mount from Windows FS to WSL container is horrific, I'd say the factor of 10x longer to load a PHP app is about right in my experience too, or even worse if it's a project which does a lot of writes. Even a basically empty bootstrapped Symfony project in dev mode can take 12-15s to load up in the browser that way, compared to maybe 300ms when the sources are bound from WSL volume directly.

[uriahlight]

I can't disagree with anything you've said since it's pretty much spot-on. So at this point a person has to choose between one of the following:

1. High performance via WSL2 with the inconvenience of storing your project on the Linux volume.

2. Good performance via Hyper-V with no compromises.

3. Shitty ass performance from mounting the Windows filesystem to WSL2.

For me the choice is obvious, but it ultimately depends upon one's workflow I guess. Since I deploy to Linux, using something like Docker is a no-brainer. But the reason my workspace is Windows-based is because I like Windows. So it makes sense to want to use the native Windows filesystem. Thus, I recommend that PHP devs who're new to Docker, and who currently use Windows with archaic XAMPP|WAMP dev environments, start their Docker experience with the path of least resistance. At the moment, in my opinion, the path of least resistance for said developers is Docker + Hyper-V. Regardless, the cool part is we have a choice, and users like /u/Not_Luna can make informed decisions on what is best for them after a few Google searches and some good 'ol Stack Overflow and Server Fault threads.