Ddev is astonishing! Here are a few notes from a Windows user.

[Greg Lumley]

If you're not using Ddev as your development environment, you should definitely consider it. I'm astonished at the speed and flexibility.

Up till now I'd been using WAMP which, for it's time was a great all round solution but the speed was abysmal, even for a local server.

I looked around and found ddev.

Here's how to find it: https://ddev.com/get-started/

A few strange things / notes - at least to me, this isn't my full-time job, I'm a photographer who was a dev of sorts for a while:

• The database host isn't "localhost" it's db, yes, instead of putting localhost as your host, you put db. So if you have connection errors that's most likely why.
• On windows, you can access your files through:
   - Explorer -  look for the Linux icon
   - You can also access them through a network share, I forget exactly what that is.
• You can transfer existing files / projects for windows into the VM via explorer.
• For VS Code windows there is a WSL plugin, this allows you to work directly on the files inside the Linux VM / container
• Don't store your files inside windows, as in outside the VM. It's not required and slows everything down, or so I've read. 
• The first project you run downloads everything needed for ddev so it'll take a while. After that, it's quick.
• If importing a db via ddev, it doesn't seem to give a progress or errors.
   - I had the "COLLATE" error inside my dump. The import stopped when it reached that table with no error output or warning, I had no idea.
   - I like phpMyAdmin and imported through that which gave me an error of the issue therefore allowing me to solve it. 
• WSL or windows subsystem layer is a lightweight VM manager, as I understand it.
   - You can run multiple Linux distros through it.
   - It integrates the distro really nicely with windows. 
• Lastly, the speed! Omg the speed! I get impatient waiting for reloads when I've changed code. Ddev is blazing fast! 

I hope this helps someone else who might have some of the same questions I did. 

 

Have a great weekend.
 

 

[gebeer]

Glad you found it and thanks for the tips for windows users. There is a dedicated forum thread with tips & tricks:

 

[Greg Lumley]

Thank you for letting me know!

I did so much Google searching and didn't realise there was a forum thread in my favourite place.