Add documentation about command-line quick start tool (8.6)

Thanks for creating the issue! Looks like this new tool is Drupal 8.6.x only. We're still working on the 8.5.x updates (being mostly a UI guide, we usually wait until the final .0 version is out before we jump to update the User Guide, as things often change for usability, translation, etc. at the last minute). So, I'm going to postpone this for the moment.

That said, if someone wants to test out this new feature and make a patch, that would be welcome! We just probably won't commit it soon.

I’ve proposed an addition to the Community Docs regarding the new Quick-start command with D8.6: https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/install/quick-start-launch-drupal-8-using-.... Comments/improvements desired. (Credit to kim.pepper for the bulk of what’s written - it’s basically straight from his change record).

Once I've managed to test on Windows 10 Home/Education/Enterprise, I’ll post a patch for the User Guide.

Note that it would probably fit best as a new 3.1, moving the current 3.1 Concept: Server Requirements to 3.2, and moving 3.2 to 3.3, etc. Interested in input on this notion.

Hm, very interesting!! After reading your short and sweet docs page, I know much more about this than I did before (I hadn't read the change record yet). For instance, I didn't know PHP had a built-in web server... and I am guessing this thing uses SQLite as the database, which is also built in to PHP essentially (if you have that extension installed).

So... I don't think this is what we want to promote in the User Guide as the best way to install Drupal, since it seems it is only for local installations and not production sites. However, I do think we should promote it as a quick way to install Drupal to a local server, in order to:
- try out Drupal
- test a new module/theme quickly
- run through the User Guide tutorial
- make a local development copy of a live site... although I'm not sure this would work well, given that the live site would probably be using MySQL and this one-step method uses SQLite I think, so I don't know whether you could dump the database from MySQL and import it into SQLite... probably not easily. So, let's not promote that idea, as I think it would be complicated to figure out how to make instructions for that, at best! So we probably want to leave the "make a dev copy" topic at https://www.drupal.org/docs/user_guide/en/install-dev-making.html as it is.

And given that, and given that we're trying to teach people how to install Drupal for purposes of building a real site (eventually), I don't think we want to get rid of the installation instructions we have. So, we'll want to promote this as an alternative for a quick try of something or to run through the tutorial.

OK, here's a proposal for what I think we should do:

a) https://www.drupal.org/docs/user_guide/en/install-requirements.html
- Change the existing header "What are the requirements for running the core software?" to "What are the requirements for a full installation of the core software?"
- Add a new section/header "What are the requirements for a quick local installation of the core software"?
==> in this section, explain which version of PHP is required, and what extensions are needed (such as sqlite).
==> Note: is "quick local installation" what we should call this? Open to other ideas, but let's pick a term.
- Add a new section/header at the top "What is the difference between a quick installation and a full installation?"
==> in this section, write a few sentences explaining that a quick install can be done on a local site but isn't for production use etc etc

b) https://www.drupal.org/docs/user_guide/en/install-prepare.html
- Change the title to "Preparing for a full install"
- Near the top, add a note that you can also do a quick local install (with a link to the new topic about that) [the install-requirements concept topic is a prerequisite so they will already know the difference]

c) https://www.drupal.org/docs/user_guide/en/install-run.html
- Change the title to "Running the full installer".

d) Add the new topic, titled something like "Making a quick local installation" [or whatever we decided in (a) to call this]. I think probably to the end of chapter 3 after the other topics? But I'm open to putting it before the full installation topic. Either way, it should also have a link to the install-prepare topic near the top.

e) Add the term "Quick local installation" [or whatever it is] to the glossary, cross-referenced under "Installation, quick local". Probably we should also add "Full installation" with "Installation, full" cross-referenced. That is in glossary.txt.

Thoughts about this plan?

I think we should consider waiting on #2956879: Proposal: Create and promote new "Quick-start guide" pages. Which proposes an official quick-start guide. And link to that.

Well, we wouldn't get this into the User Guide until 8.6 anyway. And I'm not sure whether the quick start guide is going to promote this new method for installing a quicky disposable Drupal site or will talk about doing a usable production install, or an install that could be used to mirror a live site on your local development machine, or what. I wasn't sure.

hm.... Are you saying that we don't even put this option in the User Guide at all, and instead just link to this proposed quick start guide? That could be an option....

At the moment I'm recommending we wait and see what comes out of the proposal to create a quick start guide. I'm also not totally clear on what it will contain. And therefore wasn't sure if this would end up being duplicate or not. Especially the new topic page you're proposing here.

I think overall your proposal makes sense. But if we wait to see what the quick start initiative comes up with we might be able to just link to that instead of making a new topic page in the user guide.

OK. So @kay_v, maybe for the moment, point your wonderful docs energy into (a) the d.o page you already are working on, and (b) #2956879: Proposal: Create and promote new "Quick-start guide" pages, rather than in the User Guide, for this command-line tool? Thanks!

@jhodgdon & @eojthebrave - thanks for the input! I'll come back to this thread to absorb details and figure out constructive ways to contribute. (The page posted was an impulse; naturally it'll be a happy surprise if it's of some use, and I agree there are substantial concerns to address!)

I'm setting this to active as #2956879: Proposal: Create and promote new "Quick-start guide" pages is marked as fixed, and Drupal 8.6.1 is now released.

I also updated the Quick Start Doc with minor updates and instructions for MacOS.

There's also #2993153: Draft "Getting Started" Outline & Guide which will add a new one-page guide for getting Drupal installed in a local environment that is suitable for doing development work. Whereas the quick start command is great for evaluation but you're likely not going to use it as a dev environment.

I think we can probably add those both to this page https://www.drupal.org/docs/user_guide/en/install-prepare.html, and perhaps remove some of the content there already.

This is probably also related to #2950307: Update User Guide for Drush 9 and #2980636: Fix Composer instructions for downloading Drupal core in User Guide, or add warning which all seem to touch the installation instructions. It might make sense to try and make an update that addresses all of these issues at the same time since they're all intertwined.

I believe that this one-page guide is going to cover the quick start tool: #2993155: Draft "Evaluator Guide" Outline & Guide

Yeah, it already covers the quick start tool. You can view the current version here https://www.drupal.org/docs/official_docs/en/_evaluator_guide.html

If we feel like this should be included in the User Guide than I think the proposal in #5, minus writing a new topic pages for the User Guide, is probably still relevant. We can just link the the new Evaluator Guide instead of writing a new page.

I think it's probably worth mentioning at least once in the User Guide. Mostly so that people who land on installation instructions in the User Guide, as the result of a Google search or something similar, with the intent of installing Drupal for evaluation purposes know that the quick start option exists.

Oh, I didn't know it had been published, cool!

I think we should combine this with the patch in #2950307: Update User Guide for Drush 9 then, because the stuff mentioned in #5 has been reorganized there. ... I won't have the time/energy to make a new patch until Friday, but I'll make a note there and take it up then.

I think we should postpone this until #2950307: Update User Guide for Drush 9 is done, since that reorganizes some of the sections of the Install chapter. Then we should come back here and add docs about the quick start option, by linking to the existing guide.

This can be un-postponed now, and when it's done, should be committed to the 8.x-6.x branch (which hasn't been created yet).

See essentially comment #5 for the plan of what needs to be done, although the installation chapter is somewhat reorganized since that comment was written... and we should link to https://www.drupal.org/docs/official_docs/en/_evaluator_guide.html rather than writing a new page on how to set up a quick-start evaluator site.

Regarding #12, the guide to creating a local dev site isn't on d.o yet. Once it is, we should link to it. Let's have a separate issue for that:
#3007782: Link to new page on local dev sites, once it is written

OK, here's a patch, which does the following:
a) Moves install-requirements to after install-decide, because it references the "full" vs. "demo" requirements.
b) Adds information to install-decide about methods to install the core software (previously it was just about methods to download the software). This links to the Evaluator Guide.
c) Adds notes to install-requirements about which requirements are not needed if you do a demo site.

I am a bit conflicted about this:

1. The Evaluator Guide page https://www.drupal.org/docs/official_docs/en/_evaluator_guide.html I think has some problems (typos and left-out details, like what URL to use to open the new demo site in your browser).

2. I don't know if it's really appropriate to recommend that people use this method to install the site. They'll be getting the Umami profile and a lot of sample content and views. So if they then try to follow the User Guide to create a Farmer's Market site, they will be having to undo a lot of stuff Umami sets up, and screens will not look like what's in the User Guide necessarily.

Thoughts?

I can see how it would be confusing to have the Umami demo content. And agree that it's probably not ideal to recommend following the Evlauator guide since that's what you'll end up with.

The only change necessary to that guide to use the standard profile would be to change this command to specify the standard profile instead of the demo_umami profile:

php core/scripts/drupal quick-start standard

I still like the quickstart command as a way for someone who wants to work through the user guide as a way to get started. It's by far the easiest way to get Drupal running locally. Does it make sense to instead of linking to the Evaluator Guide include the relevant instructions in the User Guide?

Yes, I think it would make sense to include the instructions here. We already have the instructions in place to download the core software (which you would still need), so we'd just need to include that one command. I'll make a patch unless someone beats me to it...

OK. Let's see. The instructions on the Evaluator Guide page are basically:
1. Download Drupal core software (we already have instructions for that in the User Guide)
2. Run that one-line command.

So basically, we only need to add that one command... and maybe add a note to the requirements page... Here's a new patch.

This works for me.

To speed things up, and the user doesn't have to try and fail with the quick-start command until all PHP extension requirements are satisfied, is it worth considering adding something like this under Requirements?

Linux

Install curl, PHP and required packages. On a Debian-based Linux platform, including Ubuntu, use the following command:
sudo apt-get install curl php7.0 php7.0-curl php7.0-dom php7.0-gd php7.0-mbstring php7.0-sqlite3

Update extension names to fx php7.2-curl if you want to use a newer version of PHP.

@ressa are you saying that the usual PHP installation that you get on Linux is not sufficient for running the Drupal quick-start command? Because
https://www.drupal.org/docs/official_docs/en/_evaluator_guide.html
doesn't say anything about that either... ??? And from php.net, it looks like sqlite is normally included with a PHP installation... Note also that we aren't suggesting people use curl to download anything, in the User Guide, unlike on the Evaluator Guide page.

Anyway, I went ahead and committed the patch in #22. We can do a follow-up if we need something added to the requirements page. Thanks! Also sending out email to the translation list.

@jhodgdon:

@ressa are you saying that the usual PHP installation that you get on Linux is not sufficient for running the Drupal quick-start command?

Yes :-) php7.0-sqlite3 is not installed by running sudo apt-get install php. On Ubuntu 16.04:

sudo apt-get install php

This installs:

• php
• php-common
• php7.0
• php7.0-cli
• php7.0-common
• php7.0-fpm
• php7.0-json
• php7.0-opcache
• php7.0-readline

If you run the quick-start command at this point, you get this error message:

[ERROR] You must have the pdo_sqlite PHP extension installed.

Not installed, but required PHP extensions:

• php7.0-curl
• php7.0-dom
• php7.0-gd
• php7.0-mbstring
• php7.0-sqlite3

Updated suggestion, under Requirements:

Linux

Install required PHP packages. On a Debian-based Linux platform, including Ubuntu, use the following command:
sudo apt-get install php php7.0-curl php7.0-dom php7.0-gd php7.0-mbstring php7.0-sqlite3

Update the number in extension names from 7.0 to 7.1 or 7.2 if you want to use a newer version of PHP, for example in Ubuntu 18.04.

@ressa -- that looks like a suggestion that is formatted for this page:
https://www.drupal.org/docs/official_docs/en/_evaluator_guide.html

That page is not part of the User Guide project -- it is part of the Official Docs project. So, please create an issue there:
https://www.drupal.org/project/official_docs/

Meanwhile, we should make a new issue in the User Guide project to make sure our requirements for installing Drupal in the User Guide include packages that are needed. It seems like we would need more PHP modules for both regular and quick start installations. So, I created
#3012035: PHP requirements may need to talk about packages
Let's continue this discussion there, because I think it's not just about the Quick Start guide.