Recently I needed to get to grips with the [Laravel](https://laravel.com/) PHP framework for a personal project and thought a small tutorial on getting started with the [Homestead](https://laravel.com/docs/5.7/homestead) development environment would be good to help beginners.

## Prerequisites

You'll need the following:

* macOS or Linux
* Latest version of Oracle's [VirtualBox](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)
* Latest version of [Vagrant](https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html) from Hashicorp
* (optional) Latest version of [Composer](https://getcomposer.org/)

## Installing Homestead

Start by installing the Homestead Vagrant box on your machine by running the following command from a shell prompt:

```
vagrant box add laravel/homestead
```

While you can install the box at the time you run `vagrant up`, we're starting the download now so it can run in the background while we complete some other tasks.

Next clone the Homestead repository from GitHub:

```
git clone https://github.com/laravel/homestead.git
cd homestead
git checkout v7.20.0
```

You'll notice we also checked out a specific tagged commit, this is because the `master` branch can be unstable and doesn't have the same rigorous testing applied as tagged releases.

Next we run the initialisation script:

```
chmod +x init.sh
./init.sh
```

Next up we have to configure the newly created `Homestead.yaml` file. Open it in your editor of choice and underneath `folders` change `~/code` to the location where you'll put your Laravel project, such as `~/Projects/contacts`. You'll need to replace the location of the code as well, so it becomes `/home/vagrant/contacts` in this example. Then below that in `sites`, map your site name, such as `contacts.test` to the above specified folder, like `/home/vagrant/contacts/public`.

Now if your Vagrant box has finished downloading from earlier you can run `vagrant up` to bring your new Homestead development environment up and get ready to work on your Laravel project. Keep in mind you don't have to use this for Laravel, Homestead contains a number of languages, frameworks, and databases to allow you to build a lot of different systems.

## Getting DNS Working

To get that URL that you selected working with Homestead, you'll need to set it up in your hosts file. To do that, edit the file at `/etc/hosts` and add a line like the following:

```
contacts.test 192.168.10.10
```

Keen observers will notice the IP address is copied from the top of the `Homestead.yaml` file, if you do change that make sure to update it in your hosts file.

You should now be able to the example site at `http://contacts.test` and see *"No input file specified."*.

## (Optional) Starting With Laravel

Run the following Composer command to install your new site (replace `~/Projects/contacts` with your project location):

```
composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel ~/Projects/contacts
cd ~/Projects/contacts
```

Now you'll be able to view your default Laravel site at your URL and be presented with a splash page.