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7. Utilities

Utilities

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

Here are the default utilities as they would be defined in vvv-custom.yml in full:

utilities:
  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 utilities available automatically
    #- php56
    #- php70
    #- php71
    #- php72
    #- php73

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

Utilities are defined at the end of the file, outside of the sites section. The utility-sources section defines the name of a utility and where it can be found.

Adding Utilities

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

utilities:
  core:
    - php56
  java:
    - java7
utility-sources:
  java:
    repo: https://github.com/example/java-utilities.git
    branch: master

My hypothetical utility 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 Utility Repositories Are Structured

A utility 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 vvv-custom.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.

Utility Provisioning

It’s possible to provision a single utility on its own, without provisioning the whole of VVV using the --provision-with parameter of vagrant.
As an example from the config.yml above we can run vagrant provision --provision-with="utility-core-php56" to provision only the PHP 5.6 utility.
To work this command requires that the utility is enabled in the config.yml file, it won’t add it automatically.

Community Utilities

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

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