NodeJS & Laravel Sail development environnement for Windows WSL 2 & VS Code

Tested against WSL UBUNTU 24.04

What do you need ?

• Ansible Playbook

  • sudo apt install ansible

• A WSL2 already installed :

  • EN : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install
  • FR : https://docs.microsoft.com/fr-fr/windows/wsl/install

• Docker for Windows (option) :

  • https://docs.docker.com/desktop/windows/install/

  Why it's an option : It's not really important to install Docker for Windows unless you have to deal with native windows application listening on specific ports on you computer. But if you install Docker for Windows be sure to enable the WSL2 option !

Installation

From a Ubuntu WSL Shell

git clone https://github.com/ncisrc/ansible-wsl-laravel.git
cd ansible-wsl-installer
bash install.sh
# You will be asked to provide your GIT identity
# (name & email to use in your commits)
sudo ansible-playbook local.yml
# reboot you PC

After installation you get :

• Git + .gitconfig
• Zsh
• Oh-My-Zsh with Agnoster Theme
• Docker
• Git-Flow + alias git-deploy
• Laravel artisan alias instead of php artisan
• Laravel sail alias.
• NVM 0.40.1
• PHP 8.3
• Integration of p4merge.

Configuration of NodeJS:

$ nvm install node # Install latest version of NodeJS
$ nvm install --nlts # Install latest LTS version of NodeJS
$ nvm install v16.18 # Install specific version of NodeJS
$ nvm use v16.18 # Set this version as default version

Configuration of NodeJS version by project

You can create a .nvmrc file at the root of your project with a specific node version for you project :

$ echo "v16.18" > .nvmrc

Then inside you project, you can use the defined version with this command :

$ nvm use

Notes :

About GIT Conflicts :

The .gitconfig file is configured to use the p4merge tool. It's a free, must have, merging tool. You can download it for free here : https://www.perforce.com/downloads/visual-merge-tool

You ONLY need to install p4merge on Windows ;)

Then all you have to do is a git mergetool inside a WSL terminal to manage conflicts and all the magic should happen.

About Debug PHP inside WSL using VS Code & Laravel Sail :

Make a .vscode/launch.json file inside you project and copy theses lines inside :

{
  // Utilisez IntelliSense pour en savoir plus sur les attributs possibles.
  // Pointez pour afficher la description des attributs existants.
  // Pour plus d'informations, visitez : https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Laravel XDebug on WSL Docker",
      "type": "php",
      "request": "launch",
      "port": 9003,
      "hostname": "localhost",
      "pathMappings": {
        "/var/www/html": "${workspaceFolder}"
      },

    }
  ]
}

Then change the XDEBUG_CONFIG param inside your docker-compose.yml as follow

...
  XDEBUG_CONFIG: 'client_host=host.docker.internal start_with_request=yes idekey=VSCODE discover_client_host=true log_level=0'
...