Server Knowledge Required

[Korferer]

Hi..

 

I've hit a wall that I cannot seem to overcome - and I don't know what to do about it because I can't even really accurately describe the problem (but I'll try).

 

It seems to me that the only way to progress beyond a certain point, requires you to have a deeper understanding of operating systems and servers and hypervisors etc. Stuff that goes wayyy beyond doing a bit of PHP and Javascript.

 

It's frustrating because I'm at that place and I can't get my head around it all. It's too vast!

 

I really want to stop using MAMP and progress on to things like VirtualBox and Vagrant. The primary reason for doing this is that I am really keen to use a PHP Framework called Laravel. But all the documentation I see tells me that I need to use something called composer to install it. Composer is a dependancy manager (I'm not sure what dependancies are, really) but in order to do that I need a virtual server because I don't think I want all this on my physical machine.

 

In order to get a virtual server I think I need a virtual operating system. I think. So I have tried to install VirtualBox and I just want to sling my laptop out of the f***ing window to be perfectly honest. It's not working. And even if it did work I wouldn't be able to tell.

 

So.. I'm clearly just venting here. There is no question. If there was a question it would be.... How can I just learn enough to get by?

[requinix]

It seems to me that the only way to progress beyond a certain point, requires you to have a deeper understanding of operating systems and servers and hypervisors etc. Stuff that goes wayyy beyond doing a bit of PHP and Javascript.

Not necessarily. I got along fine for years without having to learn that stuff. However it is good to know how PHP behaves on different OSes, especially Windows vs Linux/Mac.

 

I really want to stop using MAMP and progress on to things like VirtualBox and Vagrant. The primary reason for doing this is that I am really keen to use a PHP Framework called Laravel. But all the documentation I see tells me that I need to use something called composer to install it. Composer is a dependancy manager (I'm not sure what dependancies are, really) but in order to do that I need a virtual server because I don't think I want all this on my physical machine.

Composer doesn't have any crazy installation or anything - it's really just a few more files that you use along with your code. The main composer file is a PHP script (kinda) that you run normally (kinda), and there's generally a .lock file you keep around which is really just JSON. Uninstalling is a matter of deleting a couple files; you could use Composer to "install" the files you need, then remove it.

I really, really don't like installing stuff on my computer if I can avoid it, but I don't mind Composer. If that tells you anything.

 

In order to get a virtual server I think I need a virtual operating system. I think. So I have tried to install VirtualBox and I just want to sling my laptop out of the f***ing window to be perfectly honest. It's not working. And even if it did work I wouldn't be able to tell.

That is getting a bit more complicated, and really more than you need to worry about just to deal with Laravel.

I can't say anything about VirtualBox on a Mac but it shouldn't be that difficult. It kinda depends on your hardware but the only difference should be how well VirtualBox performs.

You'd want to run a Linux operating system: Windows requires licensing, Mac... I think you'd have similar issues. Plus Linux will just be easier performance-wise to run. If you're having specific problems then you can ask, of course - you don't have to figure it all out yourself.

[Korferer]

Thanks. Your response inspired me to try and get Laravel working on my mac. I couldn't get VirtualBox off the ground - still got a way to go in to understandning how that all works. But I did manage to get Laravel up and running on MAMP. Small steps.