You use npm in the same way you use Composer, but instead of installing PHP libraries, npm instead installs Javascript libraries. Installing Node.js also installs a tool called Node Package Manager, known as npm. If you look in the contents of the libraries/vendor folder you’ll see all of the libraries that Composer downloads.įollowing on from Composer, you’ll also need to install Node.js.
They’re libraries that perform functions like including the default editor (TinyMCE), creating PDFs (TCPDF), sending emails (PHPMailer) and even the Joomla Framework itself. Dependencies are PHP libraries developed to provide particular functionality that can be used by other code. Usually when you install Joomla, all of the dependencies required are included in the release package. Next, install Composer, which manages Joomla’s PHP dependencies. Once you’ve made changes to your branch, you can use Git to then create a pull request for your changes to then be merged back into the master branch and then be tested and committed into the project. You need to install Git, which gives you the version control system tools that tie back into GitHub and allow you to pull down the latest updates from the Joomla CMS master repository.
These are optional if you’re just going to be patch testing, but are needed if you’re developing code for Joomla. In addition to XAMPP, there’s three other tools which are recommended to be installed to create your Joomla development environment.
For example MAMP is very popular for Mac users.
These are variations for Linux, Windows and Mac versions and there’s a number of programs available on each platform.įor this tutorial we’ll be installing XAMPP 7.4.7 (released June 17 2020) which has versions for all three operating systems, but you can install a different AMP stack if you have a preference. You’ll often see them referred to as LAMP, WAMP and MAMP. They run an environment that includes Apache web server, MySQL database server and PHP. AMP stacks lets you install a local webserver on your computer.
So the first software you need is called an AMP stack. In setting up a Joomla development environment, you will be setting up a hosting server on your computer that has a few extra tools compared to how you might host your normal Joomla website. We’ll then finish up walking through using the Patch Tester component in Joomla 4 Beta. Today we’re focussing on setting up the applications you need on your computer to create a test environment, specifically for Joomla 4 Beta.
We’ll also install Git and some other tools as part of the tutorial, but will be going into how to use Git in one of our future articles on GitHub with the Joomla Project. That means with a little help from this article, you’ll be able to patch test too! If enough readers also get involved, Joomla 4 will be here sooner. My key takeaway while setting all this up… patch testing’s less daunting than I’d thought it was. Quickly getting the hang of testing, I was able to test a number of patches, and the ones that passed have now been committed into Joomla 4, fixing issues users have logged. Last weekend with my test environment up and running, Philip Walton, Bugs & Fun Home coordinator, walked me through using the Joomla Patch Tester. Participating in Bugs & Fun Home has taken me from scratching my head a month ago to contributing my first Joomla 4 Pull Request. I’ve also found a great deal of support from other experienced Joomlers by getting involved in the Bugs & Fun Home program while writing this article. Getting involved in the Joomla project is another way to speed up your learning, as I’ve found over the past two months as we’ve moved the task management for the Joomla Community Magazine into GitHub. If you’re keen to jump ahead with learning more, that’s a great starting point with some exercises that help you learn how to use GitHub. We mentioned GitHub Guides as a starting point for finding out more about using GitHub. In last month’s magazine article we gave readers a top level introduction to GitHub. This month we’ve prepared a tutorial on how to go about configuring a local testing environment. Contributing to the Joomla project is much easier when you’ve got a local testing environment.