Valet for Ubuntu

Introduction

Valet for Ubuntu is a Laravel development environment for Ubuntu minimalists. No Vagrant, no /etc/hosts file. You can even share your sites publicly using local tunnels. Yeah, we like it too.

Valet for Ubuntu configures your system to always run Nginx in the background when your machine starts. Then, using DnsMasq, Valet proxies all requests on the *.dev domain to point to sites installed on your local machine.

In other words, a blazing fast Laravel development environment that uses roughly 7mb of RAM. Valet for Ubuntu isn't a complete replacement for Vagrant or Homestead, but provides a great alternative if you want flexible basics, prefer extreme speed, or are working on a machine with a limited amount of RAM.

Official Documentation

Documentation for Valet can be found on the Laravel website.

Upgrading To Valet 2.0

Valet 2.0 transitions Valet's underlying web server from Caddy to Nginx. Before upgrading to this version you should run the following commands to stop and uninstall the existing Caddy daemon:

valet stop
valet uninstall

Next, you should upgrade to the latest version of Valet. Depending on how you installed Valet, this is typically done through Git or Composer. Once the fresh Valet source code has been downloaded, you should run the install command:

valet install
valet restart

After upgrading, it may be necessary to re-park or re-link your sites.

Requirements

• Ubuntu >= 14.04
• Dependencies: sudo apt-get install libnss3-tools jq xsel
• PHP >= 5.6
• PHP Packages: php*-cli php*-curl php*-mbstring php*-mcrypt php*-xml php*-zip
• Optional PHP Packages: php*-sqlite3 php*-mysql php*-pgsql

Replace the star (*) with your php version

Installation

1. composer global require cpriego/valet-ubuntu
2. valet install

Caveats

Because of the way Firefox and Chrome/Chromium/Opera/Any.Other.Blink.Based.Browser manages certificates in Linux the experience when securing a site might not be as smooth as it is in OSX.

Whenever you secure a site you'll need to restart your testing browser so that it can trust the new certificate and you'll have to do the same when you unsecure it.

If you have secured a domain you will not be able to share it through Ngrok.

Valet 2.0 will overwrite the Nginx and PhpFPM config files. If you've previously configured Nginx please backup your files before upgrading.

Usage

valet park

You can use valet park inside the directory where you store your projects (like Sites or Code) and then you can open http://projectname.dev in your browser. This command will allow you to access all the projects in the parked folder.

valet link

If you just want to serve a single site you can use valet link [your-desired-url] and then open http://your-desired-url.dev in the browser.

valet status

To check the status of the Valet for Ubuntu services.

Update

To update your Valet package just run: composer global update

F.A.Q.

Why can't I run valet install?

Check that you've added the .composer/vendor/bin directory to your PATH in either ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc.

What about the Database?

Well, your choice! You could use the superlight SQLite sqlite3, the extremely versatile MariaDB/MySQL mariadb-server or mysql-server or even the powerful PostgreSQL postgresql. Just don't forget to install the corresponding php package for it.

Any other tips?

Oh yeah!, for those looking for a beautiful looking Database management tool like Sequel Pro but for Linux* try out Valentina Studio, it's free, multiplatform and supports all of the databases mentioned above.

You can check it here

And download it here

* I know it is GNU/Linux but is too long and it confuses people even more

License

Laravel Valet is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license