Drupal 8: Installation Guide

This guide will descripe steps and hacks for installing Drupal 8 using Composer, Drush and standard MySQL cli client.

Prerequisite

• PHP v5.3.2+
• Composer
• Your PATH shell variable includes the path to Composer binaries at $HOME/.composer/vendor/bin
• MySQL 5.1+

Resources

• Drush 8 installation using Composer
• Composer timeout
• MySQL Collation

Goal

Install latest Drupal 8 instance using Drush installed through Composer. Drupal will use MySQL database.

Installation Steps

Each installation step comes with its own command lines examples and notes for more help.

1. Install Drush

To bootstrap Drupal 8, we need Drush 8, which isn’t stable by the time of writing this guide.

If you are installing Drush for the first time, use the following command:

export COMPOSER_PROCESS_TIMEOUT=600 # default 300
sudo composer self-update # Make sure that composer is updated
composer global update # Update all global packages to prevent conflict in dependency versions
composer global require --prefer-dist drush/drush:dev-master

NOTES: * The export command will prevent composer from running into timeout error while install psy/psysh package. * We are using composer --prefere-dist flag to prevent composer from downloading the source code of every required package. * We are not using drush/drush:8.* package because drush 8 is not stable by the time of writing this guide. * Composer will not install any package without stable version by default according to: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/composer-dev/_g3ASeIFlrc/discussion

If you already has drush installed, or you want to change the installed version use the following command:

composer global require drush/drush:7.*
# OR
composer gloabl require drush/drush:dev-master

To test drush version:

drush --version
# output should be something like:
# Drush Version  :  8.0.0-rc3

NOTES: * Drush 8 requires special xdebug configuration, if you don’t have xdebug php extension installed, ignore the following commands:

sudo vi /etc/php5/cli/php.ini # Or find the used PHP configuration file by running: `drush status` command.
# You are now in `vi` command mode, type the following sequence of characters to move in `vi`
# Go
# You are now in `vi` edit mode, just add the followin lines to the end of file
[xdebug]
xdebug.max_nesting_level=256
# Hit [Esc] button and type
# :x

2. Download Drupal

We will use drush to download Drupal 8 instance. By default, drush will download Drupal to a folder in the current directory with schema drupal-x-x-x

drush dl drupal-8 --select --all --drupal-project-rename

NOTES: * We use --drupal-project-rename to rename the project

folder name, which defaults to “drupal”. You can rename the folder any name you like be providing the new name after the --drupal-project-rename switch. | For more help: drush help dl * We use --select --all because Drupal 8 doesn’t have a stable version by the time of writing this guide.

Now, if used the previous command as is, you have a new folder called “drupal” in the current directory. Go ahead and check the downloaded files.

3. Install Drupal

We will use MySQL database for Drupal installation. For this we will connect to mysql server using mysql cli client with the root username and password.

For demonstration will assume the following mysql steup: * ‘root’ passowrd: root * mysql hostname: localhost * mysql port: DEFAULT * Drupal mysql user: drupal (User already exists in database) * Drupal mysql pass: drupalpass

mysql -u root -proot -e 'CREATE DATABASE drupal8 COLLATE = "utf8_general_ci"; GRANT ALL ON drupal8.* TO "drupal"@"localhost";'

NOTES: * If you want to create the mysql user “drupal” add the following code before the last semicolon: IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD "drupalpass"

Now go to the Drupal folder and use drush si command.

For demonstration will assume the following setup: * Current Working Directory: . * Drupal files root: ./drupal * Drupal Super Admin name: sadmin * Drupal Super Admin pass: sadminpass * Drupal Super Admin mail: sadmin@example.com

cd drupal
drush si minimal --account-name=sadmin --account-pass=sadminpass --account-mail=sadmin@example.com --db-url=mysql://drupal:drupalpass@localhost/drupal8

NOTES: * You can add additional switches to the site-install command like --site-mail and --site-name. For more help: drush help si

4. Run Drupal

You have to options to run your Drupal site now: * HTTP Server (Apache Virtual Host/Nginx) * Drush runserver

There are plenty of resources online to help you setup HTTP Server. It requires few configurations but this is usually how your site will run in production environment. For development environmnet the second option requires no steup because it uses PHP’s buil-in http server.

drush rs

NOTES: * The output will indicate the exact URL to access your Drupal site. (Defaults to: http://127.0.0.1:8888) * The minimal profile uses Stark theme, so you’ll properly need to change to more visual theme.