/laravel-homestead-tutorial

Step-by-step instructions on setting up Homestead in Windows 7

Laravel Homestead Tutorial

Step-by-step instructions on setting up Homestead in Windows 7

Introduction

Homestead is a Vagrant box people use to develop Laravel apps.

Here's how you can get Homestead up and running in Windows 7.

After following the instructions below, you'll have a Homestead Vagrant box running on your computer; you'll have a brand new Laravel app running inside of that Vagrant box; and you'll be able to access the homepage of that Laravel app using a web browser on your computer.

This is an alternative to the official instructions.

Prerequisites

  1. You're using Windows 7
  2. You have Git installed
  3. You have VirtualBox and Vagrant installed
  4. You have PuTTY Key Generator (a.k.a. puttygen.exe) on your computer

Procedure

  1. Download and install the Homestead Vagrant box into Vagrant

    • Run:
    $ vagrant box add laravel/homestead
    • During installation, when Vagrant asks you which provider you will be working with, select virtualbox
    • You can run $ vagrant box list to check which version of the Homestead Vagrant box is installed

  2. Clone the Homestead Git repository

    • Run:
    $ git clone https://github.com/laravel/homestead.git ./Homestead
    • That instructs Git to download the Homestead Git repository from GitHub, and store it in a folder named Homestead in the current directory

  3. Check out the latest stable commit from the cloned repository

    • Prior to running the following commands, replace the vX.Y.Z with whichever tag is associated with the latest release of the repository (e.g. v6.3.0). The latest release of the repository is shown here
    • Finally, run:
    $ cd ./Homestead
$ git checkout vX.Y.Z
    • The official instructions recommend doing that in case the commit checked out by default (i.e. the tip of the master branch) is in an insufficient state

  4. Generate the Homestead configuration file (i.e. Homestead.yaml)

    • If using bash, run:
    $ bash init.sh
    • Alternatively, if using cmd.exe, run:
    init.bat
    • That instructs Windows to execute the instructions in that shell/Batch script, one of which is to create a Homestead configuration file (i.e. Homestead.yaml) in the current folder

  5. Generate an SSH key pair

    • Launch puttygen.exe and generate an SSH key pair (e.g. 2048-bit RSA)
    • Save the OpenSSH-formatted private key (via Conversions > Export OpenSSH key) onto your computer
    • Save the OpenSSH-formatted authorized_keys string (via copy/pasting it into a text file) onto your computer

  6. Create an app development folder

    • If using bash, run:
    $ mkdir /c/path/to/myapps
    • Alternatively, if using cmd.exe, run:
    mkdir c:\path\to\myapps
    • That will create a folder named myapps in c:/path/to/
    • You can name your app development folder whatever you want, and store it wherever you want
    • Subsequent instructions will assume your app development folder is c:/path/to/myapps

  7. Edit the Homestead configuration file (i.e. the Homestead.yaml file generated earlier)

    • Edit the fields shown below to have the values shown below:
    provider: virtualbox

authorize: c:/path/to/openssh_authorized_keys_string.txt

keys:
    - c:/path/to/openssh_private_key.txt
    
folders:
    - map: c:/path/to/myapps
      to: /home/vagrant/code
      
sites:
    - map: myapp.local
      to: /home/vagrant/code/myapp/public
      
databases:
    - homestead
    • Save the file

  8. Add an entry to the Windows hosts file

    • As an Administrator, edit the file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
    • Add the following line to the file:
    192.168.10.10 myapp.local
    • Save the file
    • That will allow you to visit your app at http://myapp.local

  9. Spin up the Vagrant box

    • Inside your Homestead folder, run:
    $ vagrant up

    • That will spin up the Vagrant box and configure it (i.e. provision it) according to the settings defined in the Homestead configuration file

    • Once the Vagrant box has been provisioned, you will be able to visit http://myapp.local in your web browser. You may see a page there that says, "No input file specified." (screenshot below).

  10. Connect to the Vagrant box via SSH

    • Run:
    $ vagrant ssh

  11. Create a Laravel app on the Vagrant box

    • On the Vagrant box, run:
    $ cd /home/vagrant/code
$ composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel myapp
    • That will create a Laravel app, whose files are stored in /home/vagrant/code/myapp

  12. Visit the app's homepage

    • Using a web browser on your computer (i.e. not on the Vagrant box), visit http://myapp.local

    • You will see the app's homepage (i.e. the "Laravel" page)

  13. Done!

Versions

I used the following software versions when writing this document:

  1. Windows 7: 64-bit with Service Pack 1
  2. Vagrant: 1.9.6
  3. VirtualBox: 5.1.14
  4. Homestead Vagrant box: 3.1.0
  5. Homestead Git repository: 6.3.0
  6. PuTTY Key Generator (a.k.a. puttygen.exe): 0.68 (64-bit)
  7. Git: 2.12.2.windows.2