Note: Laravel Sail is now the preferred method, so use that instead. Or you can use Laradock.

Although this is the recommended method of development in the Laravel docs, you do not have to follow it. An alternative to homestead, if you have Windows 10 Home and above, is to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is detailed below.

WSL allows you to run a Linux OS inside of your Windows installation. Much like a VM, but with more convienient integration and set-up. WSL is more suited to people who are comfortable with the command line, and don't require any GUI tools. Amazingly, WSL works wonderfully with web development, and is simple to install.

1. Open the start menu and type 'features'.
2. Open 'Turn windows features on or off'.
3. Scroll down and tick 'Windows Subsystem for Linux'.
4. Click OK and restart your PC when prompted.

1. Open the Windows Store app.
2. Search for 'Ubuntu'.
3. Install either version 18.04 or 20.04.
4. Launch the OS either through the terminal using ubuntu-20.04, or click on the start menu shortcut.
5. Follow the instructions on setting up the instance.

1. Perform a system update using sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade.
2. Install php, mysql-server, and composer using their respective package names.
3. Make sure to insall all the required extensions Laravel requires using sudo apt install php7.4-<extension_name>.
4. Follow the Laravel docs to install the laravel/installer package globally.
5. If you're planning on using VueJS, install node and npm.

Once you have cloned a repository that you want to work on, you can use the built-in PHP development server to serve the sites.

1. Navigate to the root directory of the project.
2. Type php -S localhost:8000 to start the development server.
3. Access it from your browser according to the url: localhost:8000.

Of course, if your app relies on a database, ensure that you have started the service using sudo service mysql start. And before that, follow the setup for mysql server on Ubuntu using any online guide.

You must have the following installed and configured in order to do this:

• Vagrant: https://www.vagrantup.com/.
• Virtualbox: https://www.virtualbox.org/.
• Virtualization enabled in BIOS (Typically AMD-V or VT-x).
• I would recommend you have at least 4GB RAM and 4 cores for performance.

1. Open CMD
2. Type vagrant box add laravel/homestead
3. When prompted, chose 3. Virtualbox
4. Wait for the install to finish (typically takes at least 5 minutes on decent internet)

1. Create a folder in a location of your choosing to install Homestead
2. Clone the Homestead repo: git clone https://github.com/laravel/homestead.git
3. cd into homestead folder
4. Switch to release git checkout release
5. Execute init.bat

1. Open Homestead.yaml in an editor
2. IP, Memory, CPU and Provider can be kept as default
3. Delete keys section.
4. The folders section maps the project source files between your local machine and the virtual machine. When choosing a path, make sure the host file path is in the absolute path format: C:\Users\MyUser\Documents\LaravelCode is an example of such format.

5. The sites section contains the path to the public folder of the project source files. As well as the url that will be used to view the site.
6. When changing values in the .yaml file, you must reload the machine with the --provision flag.

• Create a homestead.bat file in a folder of your choosing
• Add the following code to it, replacing the path for the Homestead instance with yours:

   @echo off

   set cwd=%cd%
   set homesteadVagrant=E:\homestead

   cd /d %homesteadVagrant% && vagrant %*
   cd /d %cwd%

   set cwd=
   set homesteadVagrant=

• Add this file to your PATH environment variable.

• vagrant up: Starts the VM
• vagrant ssh: SSH into the VM
• vagrant halt: Stops the VM
• vagrant reload: Reboots the VM
• vagrant reload --provision: Reloads and provisions the VM (Do this every time you want to reboot the VM, as it reloads all configuration files.)

If you have added the homestead.bat to your PATH, you can swap vagrant for homestead to achieve these commands from outside the homestead directory.

• SSH into the VM.
• Navigate to the code folder you created to house all the projects.
• Type laravel new <project_name>, where <project_name> is the name you want to call your app.
• After composer has finished installing Laravel, open the project folder in your favourite editor.
• Investigate the .env file, and configure the DB values as required, the default values for the homestead DB are:

DB_DATABASE=homestead
DB_USERNAME=homestead
DB_PASSWORD=secret

This is specifically for Windows

• Navigate to the Homestead.yaml file
• Create a new entry that has a URL of your choice, avoid using .app or .dev unless you want to tackle with SSL issues!
• Add the direct path to the project files, such as: /home/vagrant/code/blog/public. Ensure it points to public.
• Open your hosts file located at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc.
• Add an entry with the IP of your homestead box listed in the Homestead.yaml file, and the domain name you chose.
• Re-provision the machine using vagrant reload --provision.
• Navigate to the domain you chose in your browser, you should see the default Laravel landing page.

All the laravel commands that can be executed in the project folder are prefixed with php artisan:

• php artisan migrate:fresh: Drop and re-create all databases with no data.
• php artisan migrate:fresh --seed: Same as above, but run the seeders to populate the database.
• php artisan make: Basically the main command used for Laravel, if you run this you can see all the commands used with make to create whatever you want.

From within the Homestead machine, you can use aliases as set in the Homestead alias file

• With the default aliases included with Homestead, you can shorten php artisan to just art. For example, art migrate.
• This also applies to some composer commands, such as composer dump-autoload to composer dump.

There are a few considerations when using NPM from within the VM, namely permissions. Whenever possible, try to run npm commands outside of the VM. If you encounter errors when installing packages using npm, you can use the following commands to fix it:

• When running npm install for the first time, do so from outside the VM
• If you get an error when running npm run dev, do the following from inside the VM:
  • rm -rf node_modules
  • rm package-lock.json
  • npm cache clear --force
• Then from outside the VM run npm install, and all should be solved.