Vagrant boxes / Docker images are filling effectively the same gap, but anyone can build such an environment. MAMP, WAMP, XAMP etc are proving to be less effective with M2 because they do not include all the tools needed for modern development.

It is less work to get going – someone has installed all the tools for you.There are a few benefits (and a few negatives). Why is this sort of Virtualization better than a native environment? But it goes against the “have one recommendation so I don’t have to think” approach. The point here is not to restrict developers to that one way, but rather for people who just want to get going, is there a recommended path forward so they don’t have to do the evaluation of alternatives themselves. It’s a great community, and I am sure there will be more out there as people work on and refine these images.īut I do get asked “why doesn’t Magento just define a single recommended way to do things”. Mark Shust immediately comes to mind on the Docker side, Joshua Warren has MageScotch on the Vagrant side, I would of course be remiss to not mention the Vagrant box used by a number of internal Magento developers, and there are lots more (feel free if you develop one to drop a link in the comments). There are a multiple efforts by different people on development environments for Magento 2. (And if you found this article at random on the web, the following discussion is oriented around Magento development.)

I wanted to share my current thinking and welcome constructive feedback. But I have been thinking hard about Docker versus Vagrant for building development environments.

I apologize in advance if this starts a religious war – that is not my intent.

Docker for mac vagrant