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WARNING: Local Lightning incompatible with many tools/workflows!

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#1

I have spent the better part of two working days trying to get Local Lightning to work under some very common scenarios and it will not accommodate these. First of all, any tool or workflow that requires connecting to your database through a host and port will not work on Lightning. The only way to connect is through a socket connection. I’m sure there must be some tools out there that support socket connections but none that i use support that, including PHPStorm, one of the most widely used php IDE’s, and Duplicator which is a widely used site backup/recovery tool.

Another common workflow is using PHPUnit with PHPStorm. This is a great workflow that i’ve used with Local for sometime, but does not work with Lightning. Lightning does not offer a way to SSH into your site, nor does it offer a way to map ports. There’s even a detailed article from 2 years ago on how to configure Local to use PHPStorm with PHPUnit, but Lightning breaks this article: Local Classic + PHPUnit + PhpStorm

I honestly can’t find any tools i use in my workflow that will work with Lightning. In the end, i had to find an article with a link to the 3.3.0 release as well as an article on how to install old addons so that I could get the 3.3.0 compatible version of xdebug + phpstorm to work with 3.3.0, since the current version of xdebug + phpstorm doesn’t allow you to run it in 3.3.0.
Here’s the comment I found on how to manually install addons: Can not install add-on from disk

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#2

I’ve had the same experience but with a different set of tools. Not having access to the host and port has broken my workflow and I’m no longer able to easily set up local sites to work on client sites. This is a deal breaker for my workflow and I’m stuck on Local v3.x or going with another tool until/unless this is updated.

#3

Hey @Blylier and @circlecube –

Local does abstract out a lot of the details of working with WordPress sites, but there’s always room for improvement!

I’d love to hear a bit more about your development setup so I can get a better idea of what’s going on as well as how we can improve Local to make your lives easier!

For starters:

  • What OS and what version of OS is installed?
  • What editor/IDE are you using?
  • If using a terminal, what terminal is being used, as well as what shell?
  • What other dev tools are you using? Git? PHPunit?
  • Can you give a couple sentence description of the kind of development you are doing, as well as the workflow that you are using?
#4

@ben.turner Thank you for noticing this!

  1. I’m using Mac OSX 10.15.6.
  2. I use PHPStorm as my editor and
  3. I use the mac terminal and I’m not sure how to answer what “shell” I use? I just open up the terminal.
  4. I use PHPUnit for testing and Git for version control. As for other dev tools, there are many that need a port & url, one example is the tool I use to sync my live site with my dev environment which is called: Duplicator. However, which tools is not important. just know any tool that needs access to the database cannot be used unless it accepts a socket connection, which not many do.
  5. My workflow that i use PHPStorm to develop wordpress plugins. I use PHPUnit to test those and duplicator to keep my live site in sync with my dev environment. I cannot use PHPUnit with PHPStorm nor duplicator. Also, you guys had an article for using PHPUnit, PHPStorm, and Local all together, but never updated it for use with Local Lightning. If you would just try that again, you would understand what we’re talking about. It’s not possible to do unless you give us access to ports and a DB url.
#5

That’s all really good feedback!

I found out that there is a work-around for getting the port to show up and be useful in Mac. Can you take a look at this FAQ and see if that allows you to get the tools you use to work with the site’s DB?

#6

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