DrupalPro

DrupalPro Development Desktop is built on Ubuntu 12.04

DrupalPro is a downloadable pre-built machine image for Virtualbox; but may work equally well with VMware, QEMU, Parallels, or the like. It aims to be ready out-of-the-box for building websites, developing, theming, and contributing to Drupal. It's also useful for Trainers looking for a clean stable environment that can be setup in short-order.

Advantages

DrupalPro Development Desktop is easily backed up (even in real-time), easily cloned and customized for each individual project, doesn't require installing gobs of software on your computer in order to build websites, is easy to remove or migrate to another computer, is much more compatible with your production webserver than a WAMP or MAMP stack, and can even be run on a USB3 stick.

Getting Started

1. Install Virtualbox (version 4.1.16+)
   • Note: When installation completes a window for creating a virtual machine will open. Close this window and proceed to step two
2. Download the image: DrupalPro: Beta2 - works in 32 or 64bit environments
3. Import virtual machine (.ova file):
   • Start Virtualbox
   • File -> Import Appliance -> Choose file... -> (select the downloaded ova image file)
   • Set RAM to 50% of your system RAM (minimum 1000MB)
   • If you have a multi-core CPU -- assign as many CPU's as you can spare. Virtualbox will only use when/whats needed.
   • Depending on your setup, you might need to disable HOST ONLY network card.
   • Import -> (wait for import to finish)
4. Start developing!
   • username:password
   • Ubuntu = drupalpro:drupalpro
   • MySQL = root:drupalpro
   • Drupal = admin:admin
   • Note: beta1 image still uses quickstart user/passwords

Updating DrupalPro

To update DrupalPro, do this from inside DrupalPro when its running. (Always backup or take a snapshot before running updates of any-kind).

Press (F4) Key to open a terminal, then copy and paste these lines:

cd ~/drupalpro/setup_scripts
git add .     # add any changes to index so we can stash everything
git stash save "stash my changes (probably just logs) before pulling in update"
git pull --rebase  # update drupalpro
./update.sh  # run update script

Update Drush (not yet part of update script)

# type the following in a terminal Drupalpro beta2 to update drush to 5.9

cd ~/drush
git pull
git tag  # to list available versions
git checkout 7.x-5.9  # to checkout drush 5.9

Background

DrupalPro Development Desktop started in May 2012 as the 7.x-2.x branch of the Quickstart project. However, after a lot of work and a beta release, the Quickstart founder decided Ubuntu 12.04 Unity was not the way forward for Quickstart. I believe Unity is a more productive workspace than Gnome 2. Regardless, more choice is good. :)

What is the focus for DrupalPro Development Desktop?

• Plug-and-play web stack with emphasis on performance (out-of-the box). But development/debugging still fully supported
• Beginner Tools & Help to make learning Drupal easier
• Plug-and-play environment for contributing to Drupal
• Plug-and-play environment to support Drupal Training
• Focus on security by making best practices easier for beginners but without modifying typical Ubuntu setup. Thereby also making it easier for experienced Linux users. In other words, your webserver environment should really mirror a production server setup and should be safe to run connected to any network. Note: currently security is greatly improved vs. Quickstart 1.0 -- but it's still not both super secure AND super easy.
• Focus on making setup scripts user friendly and compatible to run in an existing Ubuntu 12.04+ setup in order to create your own DrupalPro Development Desktop.

Changes

The old environment is now working in a newer and less customized version of Ubuntu 1204 LTS. Most of the existing Quickstart documentation is still useful (or was actually updated to reflect the beta version before forking to DrupalPro). Here are the changes:

If you'd like to see something specific in the installation, or need support, please join the #drupalpro IRC channel. If IRC isn't you thing, feel free to post an issue. And of course patches are welcomed!

Final Note: almost everything above is already completed and working in the latest Ubuntu 12.04 setup. Right now I'm adding polish and refining features. The future direction will be to go more modular and desktop agnostic (read: compatibility with Mint, Debian, LXDE, XFCE, etc.). Also, I'd like to focus on the scripts (whether BASH, chef/vagrant, puppet) to be more portable and modular -- so that they can be used in existing environments or run to quickly spin-up your own project based virtual development environment.