VVV logo VVV

7. Extensions

Extensions

Extensions are packages for VVV that install system level functionality. For example, a core extensions package is provided by default. This default extension can install phpMyAdmin, webgrind, and other versions of PHP.

Extensions used to be called utilities, but were renamed to avoid confusion.

Here are the default extensions as they would be defined in config/config.yml in full:

extensions:
  core:
    - memcached-admin # Object cache management
    - opcache-status # opcache management
    - phpmyadmin # Web based database client
    - webgrind # PHP Debugging
    - tls-ca # SSL/TLS certificates
    - mongodb # needed for Tideways/XHGui
    - tideways # PHP profiling tool, also installs xhgui
    - wpcli-dev # Install a dev environment to use and contribute to WP-CLI
    - php # Install all the php extensions available automatically
    #- php74
    #- php80
    #- php81
    #etc...

extension-sources:
  core:
    repo: https://github.com/Varying-Vagrant-Vagrants/vvv-utilities.git
    branch: master

Extensions are defined at the end of the file, outside of the sites section. The extension-sources section defines the name of an extension and where it can be found.

Adding Extensions

Lets say that I want to run Java 7 inside a VVV installation. In order to install java, I’ll need an extension. Lets name it java and include it:

extensions:
  core:
    - php81
  java:
    - java7
extension-sources:
  java:
    repo: https://github.com/example/java-utilities.git
    branch: master

My hypothetical extension defines how to install different versions of Java, and is located in a git repository. I might have defined how to install java 8, or java 6, but here I used java 7.

How Extension Repositories Are Structured

An extension git repo contains folders, and each folder has a provisioner script inside.

With this in mind, I would expect the java repository mentioned earlier to have this folder structure:

The name of the subfolder maps directly on to what is put in config/config.yml. VVV will run the provision.sh file, at which point it can do as it pleases. This could be installing a package via apt-get or something else. Other files can be included in these folders for provision.sh to make use of.

Extension Provisioning

It’s possible to provision a single extension on its own, without provisioning the whole of VVV using the --provision-with parameter of vagrant. As an example from the config/config.yml above, we can run vagrant provision --provision-with="extension-core-php81" to provision only the PHP 8.1 extension.

Important: To work this command requires that the extension is also enabled in the config/config.yml file, it won’t add it automatically.

Community Extensions

Community extensions are independently developed and contributed by interested members of the community, provided on an ‘as is’ basis.

Edit this page