Laravel is known for making every development process easy and delightful, and Homestead is a very useful tool. Homestead is a pre-packaged Vagrant box in Laravel. A ready-to-use virtual machine. Thanks to it, Laravel development companies can create a consistent and hassle-free environment for building Laravel applications for every developer.
To run Laravel, you need specific software and configurations on your PC. Homestead simplifies this process by providing a pre-configured virtual machine that already has everything you need.
Homestead is compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems and comes bundled with Nginx, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Memcached, Node, and all the essential software required for building impressive Laravel applications.
Think of the (VM) virtual machine as a computer within your computer, with an operating system that includes all the essential software like a web server (Nginx), PHP, a database server (MySQL or PostgreSQL), and tools like ‘Composer’ for managing packages.
To use Homestead, you'll first need to install the main component on your local machine, Vagrant and VirtualBox.
Vagrant is a tool that helps manage virtual machines to help install and configure Homestead.; while, VirtualBox is the software that runs the virtual machine.
Download Link for Vagrant: https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant/downloads
Download link for VirtualBox: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
With the help of these tools, you can run your Virtual machine efficiently without the need for any other software or application.
Now, let’s start with the installation of Homestead.
You can install Homestead by duplicating the Homestead repository on your local machine. It is recommended to clone the repository into a folder called "Homestead" within your "home" directory. This Homestead folder will be the main host for all your Laravel applications.
git clone https://github.com/laravel/homestead.git ~/HomesteadAfter the cloning process, check out the "release" branch. As it always contains the latest version of the homestead.
cd ~/Homestead
git checkout releaseAfter cloning let's start installing Homestead with the "bash init.sh” command for Linux and macOS and “init.bat” for Windows.
By doing this it will create a Homestead.yaml file in your home directory.
~/.homestead on macOS and Linux
C:\Users\Username\.homestead on Windows
The Homestead.yaml file is where you'll customize all the settings for your Homestead installation. You can configure various options to tailor your Homestead environment according to your needs.
After installation let’s configure the homestead file.
The IP address configuration for Laravel Homestead is important because it allows you to access your Laravel applications running inside the virtual machine from your web browser on the host machine.
When you set up Homestead, you configure an IP address in the Homestead.yaml file. By default, Homestead uses the IP address 192.168.10.10. This IP address acts as a bridge between the virtual machine and your host machine, allowing them to communicate.
To configure the host file, Open the host file on your computer
/etc/hosts on macOS and Linux
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows
Add the following command “192.168.10.10 homestead.test” and save the file.
After completing the configuration run Homestead virtual machine, execute: “vagrant up” in your project's directory, and it will boot up a virtual machine.
For daily usage, to access your virtual machine, you can use the command "vagrant ssh" in the terminal. Make sure you are in the Homestead directory when running this command. It will establish a secure connection to the virtual machine, allowing you to interact with it through the terminal.
If you are new to Laravel, it's crucial to go step by step, so that it works smoothly. Either you can connect to any Laravel developer to get started from any Laravel development company and start your Laravel journey smoothly.
Overall, Homestead allows developers to set up a standardized and reproducible development environment quickly. It simplifies setting up a development environment for Laravel, making it easier for developers to start coding and testing their applications without worrying about time-consuming, complex installations and configurations.
If you are planning to grow your business with a website, consider hiring a Laravel developer for your development process; not only will it save you time, but it will also give you quality results