Setting up 👷‍♂️ Local Dev Server on Windows 10

I've been using Homestead Vagrant Box for a long time and I'm very happy with it. It's a perfectly configured Virtual Machine built on top of Ubuntu that has everything to develop almost any web project.

In future I might switch to WSL which looks very promissing. Hopefully it would have improved performance and CentOs 8 support 🤞

Folder Structure

All my projects are located in one easy accessible directory — c:\code. When working from Command Prompt you can type cd \code and get to desired project using TAB autocomplete feature.

Also I like to automate workflow and have helper scripts and functions available via Command Prompt. All of the scripts, batch files and portable software resides at c:\bin folder.

Apps needed

If you're starting from scratch and don't have Git, ConEmu, Clink, VS Code, VirtualBox, Vagrant, SourceTree — go ahead and install all the latest releases.

Environment

To make Command Prompt more usefull you should modify Windows Environment Settings. Easy way to get to them is by pressing Win + S, typing env, and choosing — "Edit Environment Variables for your account"

Add some directories to User's Variable — "PATH" — for easy access to executables that you'd collect there:
c:\bin — here we'll be collecting our helper scripts
c:\bin\kitty — for easy access to portable Kitty SSH client

Portable KiTTy SSH client

KiTTy is a most popular fork of a legendary PuTTy SSH client with many implemented enchancements. We'll be using portable version with my customized default settings which will have — nice color scheme, default font set to Fira Code with Powerline symbols (add it to your fonts), default term set to xterm-256color, logging.

mkdir c:\bin\kitty\Sessions
mkdir c:\bin\kitty\Logs
curl -# -L -o c:\bin\kitty\kitty.exe http://www.9bis.net/kitty/files/kitty_nocompress.exe
curl -# -L -o c:\bin\kitty\Sessions\Default%20Settings https://gist.github.com/ossipov/880a930f79b8a01d981fdd4b6b8267a4/raw

ConEmu

ConEmu is the best Terminal for Windows and it comes with enormous ammount of settings that you can modify and tweak. You can launch it by pressing Win + S and start typing conemu. It also has a global shortcut configured to show and hide window on Ctrl + `.

Getting your dev stack

Depending on what you're building here are some links you might also find useful:
NodeJS, Yarn, PHP, Composer, Python, Go. Don't forget to add executables path to Windows PATH variable.

Homestead

By now you have VirtualBox and Vagrant installed. Open up ConEmu and start hacking 😎

rem -------------------------------------------------------
rem Add support for NFS
rem -------------------------------------------------------
vagrant plugin install vagrant-winnfsd

rem -------------------------------------------------------
rem Add Homestead Box to Vagrant 
rem -------------------------------------------------------
vagrant box add laravel/homestead

rem -------------------------------------------------------
rem Create keypair for Homestead
rem -------------------------------------------------------
mkdir %homepath%\.ssh\keys\homestead
ssh-keygen -N "" -f %homepath%\.ssh\keys\homestead\id_rsa

rem -------------------------------------------------------
rem Install Homestead
rem -------------------------------------------------------
mkdir c:\homestead
cd c:\homestead
git clone https://github.com/laravel/homestead.git .
git checkout release
init.bat
code -n c:\homestead\Homestead.yaml

Adjust Homestead.yaml config. Official docs are really good and easy to follow. If you created keypair with above command here is a correct location of those keys.

---
authorize: ~/.ssh/keys/homestead/id_rsa.pub
keys:
    - ~/.ssh/keys/homestead/id_rsa

folders:
    - map: c:\code\project.com
      to: /home/vagrant/project.com
      type: "nfs"
#    - map: c:\code\project2.com
#    to: /home/vagrant/project2.com
#     type: "nfs"

sites:
    - map: project.test
      to: /home/vagrant/code/project.com/public
#    - map: project2.test
#      to: /home/vagrant/code/project2.com/public

databases:
    - project1
#    - project2

features:
    - mariadb: true

After saving the file return to ConEmu and run

code -n %windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Edit Windows 10 hosts to make domains available for your browser

192.168.10.10     project.test
192.168.10.10     project2.test

ConEmu again

cd c:\homestead
vagrant up
cd \code\project.com
code .