Fast Local Development + Pantheon + Drush = Kalabox
We will discuss the various local and on-server Drupal development environments that are currently available and how readily available/free/open source local development environments have fallen behind.
Then, enter the Kalamuna Kalabox, a FREE and application based modern webserver that has a sexy GUI to manage your sites but also can be SSH'd into and customized. The rest of the session will showcase all of the features, easy of use and customization options that are available with Kalabox.
Kalabox ships as a one-click MacOSX installer (Windows/Linux in the works) built on puppet source that runs natively in a linux virtual box.
The Stack
nginx
PHP5 (with common extensions including apc)
MySQL
Apache Solr
Apache Tomcat
Our stack is comparable to the Pantheon stack minus the key performance tools (Varnish, Redis, etc) which makes it a great tool for developing Pantheon sites locally. It is also one of the only stacks that ships with nginx and apache solr by default. Our stack is already built and performance tuned for Drupal which means that on a local rig it is very fast. Kalabox makes your development cycles more efficient.
The Tools
SSH
git
drush
PHPMyAdmin
samba
webgrind
xdebug
We ship with some standard web tools like git and PHPMyAdmin but we also wrap in webgrind for easy profiling of code and samba to expose your webroot to an IDE that you can run natively on your OS instead of inside a virtual box. If you use eclipse or netbeans or xdebug compatible IDE you can easily debug your code.
The Frontend
Kalabox also provides a node.js MacOSX application frontend so the user can easily spin up new drupal sites, access utilities and tweak their environment.
Pantheon Integration
Kalabox was built with Pantheon in mind and as a consequence kalabox comes with extensive pantheon integration. You can enter your Pantheon user name and password into kalabox and see all your pantheon sites show up in the kalabox dashboard. With one-click ease you can pull down or refresh code, data and files from any of your pantheon sites. You can also choose to build any of your pantheon sites locally. Make the fast and best practices Pantheon experience even faster and MORE best practices by developing locally.
The Consequences
1. Share the same local development environment with other developers.
2. Speed up development
3. Get all the advantages of a modern stack with no sysadmin experience
4. Get a great starting point if you do have sysadmin experience and want to customize your environment
5. Supercharge your Pantheon development workflow.
Comments
I just heard of Kalabox after the SF DUG last week. This sounds awesome!
As part of the group of original Kalabox users, I have been using it on a daily basis and can say that it has revolutionized the way I do local development. Before Kalabox, I had to do my best to get other solutions like XAMPP working on my computer. But then I installed Kalabox, and everything was ready to go. Plus, you can't beat the Pantheon integration via Drush. It's so much easier to run the commands than to do it all manually.
I think any developer would benefit from hearing about how Kalabox can streamline their development.
I've seen Kalabox work wonders for teams trying to get on the same page when developing Drupal. I think this oft-overlooked area of development needs to be highlighted and that Kalabox will make the Drupal development process so much more enjoyable for developers.
I'd really like to attend this session!
I have seen how fast, robust and streamlined the sites built by the team at Kalamuna are. If the Kalabox is a part of that recipe it should serve as a good foundation for best practice Drupal development.
As noted earlier this was mentioned at the SF DUG and generated a fair bit of interest.
Kalabox has replaced Vagrant as my go-to Drupal environment. After talking with Mike about his future plans, I'm really interested to see what people think about the updated product.
Where is the Kalabox project? Presentation... Is the release?