4 Lando goodies that will improve your day to day project work

For well over a decade I was looking for a tool that would allow me to work on all of my projects in the same way.

Lando is the perfect solution for this. (For those who are new to Lando, head to https://docs.lando.dev/basics)

Lando vastly simplifies local development

It comes with a very powerful functionality, called Tooling which allows developers to create a custom toolset for their project.

The Goodies

When you are working on a high variety of projects, after a while you start recognising patterns. Things that you have to do on all of the projects, repeatedly.

I’ve collected 4 custom commands what I use almost everyday.

1. lando build-app

Download and build application resources

What is it good for?

This will save time on project initialisation and when you want to completely rebuild the project. It also comes handy when you switch between branches and you want to rebuild your resources.

2. lando clean

Deleting downloaded and built resources

What is it good for?

Cleaning the downloaded and built resources can be very useful when you want to start fresh without destroying the whole project.

3. lando install-app

Install the application

What is it good for?

Every application is an end result of an installation process. This script meant to be reducing the time and headaches around the “How do I build this project?” topic.

4. lando xdebug

Loading Xdebug in a user defined mode.

What is it good for?

Xdebug is a must on every php projects. Before Xdebug 3 you had to rebuild your application every time when you enabled/disabled this tool. Nowadays you can use “modes” to load the extension in a way which is accustomed to your needs, or just turn it “off”.

To see these in action I’ve created an example Drupal 9 project where you can try these out. Check https://github.com/cleverhoods/lando-goodies for further information.

Benefits of standardising your OPs scripts

There are huge benefits of OPs script standardisation, such as:

• Massive time decrease on task initialisation, merge request reviews and switching between projects.
• “#oops I didn’t know you have to do that for it to work” is a thing of the past.
• It becomes simple to extend and improve your development workflow
• If you write the scripts in a platform agnostic manner your can use it for other local development tools or even in your CI/CD workflow

— Gábor Mészáros