Drupaltools Developer Setup

Drupal Developer Machine Setup

Configure a local development machine for Drupal work.

Scope

This skill covers:

• Machine-level software installation
• CLI tools (Drush, Drupalorg CLI, Composer)
• PHP configuration and version management
• Docker/DDEV setup
• IDE configuration (PhpStorm, VS Code)
• Terminal utilities (OhMyZsh, Tmux)
• Code quality tools (PHPCS, PHPStan, CaptainHook)

For project-level guidance, use drupaltools-checklist-development.

Process

1. Detect Current State

Check what's installed:

php --version
composer --version
docker --version
drush --version

2. Core Installation

PHP:

# Ubuntu/DDEV-compatible
sudo apt install php8.2-cli php8.2-mysql php8.2-xml php8.2-mbstring php8.2-curl

Composer:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Drush Launcher:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/drush-ops/drush-launcher/releases/latest/download/drush.phar -o /usr/local/bin/drush
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/drush

3. Docker/DDEV

DDEV with extensions:

docker pull drud/ddev-php8.2 || true
ddev config global --instrumentation-opt-in=false
ddev start

4. IDE Setup

PhpStorm essential plugins:

• PHP Inspections (EA Extended)
• Deep Associative Array Completion
• DrupalStorm
• .ignore

5. Code Quality Tools

composer global require drupal/coder squizlabs/php_codesniffer phpstan/phpstan

DDEV Commands

When working inside a Drupal project with DDEV:

# Execute Drush (always available in DDEV)
ddev drush <command>

# Execute Composer
ddev composer <command>

# Common Drush workflows
ddev drush cr          # Clear cache
ddev drush updb        # Run database updates
ddev drush cex         # Export config
ddev drush en <module> # Enable module

Reference