• You're going to use the command line now.
• On Mac OSX or Ubuntu, you can open Terminal to reach the command line. If you're developing in Windows, see Appendix F on setting up a Windows development environment for instructions, or you could consider setting up a virtual machine running Ubuntu for your Drupal development environment (discussed in Appendix G).
• For this exercise, you're going to focus on local development. When working on sites that are staged on a remote host, you'll want to also install Drush and Git on the host servers and log into those servers on the command line. If you're on Mac OSX, Panic's Coda (www.panic.com/coda/) includes a Terminal editor that will let you do this automatically. If you're developing locally, you'll still have to use Terminal.
• Whether you're installing Drush locally or remotely, be ABSOLUTELY SURE to put Drush outside your web root (i.e. where your Drupal installation is stored). Putting a site with Drush inside it on a remote server could make it very easy for attackers to break into your Drupal site.

Once you have Drush installed (covered next), you'll be able to run many Drush commands from within folders containing the Drupalsite root. Once you're on the command line, using the command cd /path/to/drupal will get you there(where ‘/path/to/drupal' is replaced with the path to your Drupal site in your file system). Then you can execute Drush commands using drushcommandname. (If you run Drush commands from your Drupal folder, drush targets the default site on your installation (the one in sites/default); if you're running several sites on the same installation, navigate to your site directory [cd /path/to/drupal/sites/example.com] or add [-l http://example.com] to your drush command.) The following is an example of downloading and enabling the Date module using Drush. The first command, cd Dropbox/MAMP/dgd7, navigates you to the Drupal site's folder; the path will differ on your system:

The three steps that follow are adapted from a blog post by Laura Scott and used with permission; these steps walk you through the process of installing Drush. She installed Drush on Mac OS X, which the authors also develop in, and the instructions will work on any Unix-like system. If you're on Windows, see Appendix F to get started with a Windows development environment for Drupal or Appendix G to run Ubuntu Linux in a virtual machine (you can also considerusing Cygwin to mimic the UNIX environment).

1. Download Drush

GetDrush at drupal.org/project/drush. Drush works for every version of Drupal, so just find the latest version and download it (see Figure 2-2).(Drush may be the last project you need to download manually!)

Put the tarball into your working folder, which, ideally, is a folder in your home directory. We created a working folder called dev in our home directory.

Double-click on the tarball to open it up. When you go into the drush folder, you'll see a number of files, including the README.txt file. Read it!

Figure 2-2. The Drush project page. The latest version under “Recommended releases” is the one you want.

If you're already comfortable with the command line, you can also do this via Terminal by copying the link to the tar.gz on the project page, then typing the following into Terminal from the home folder (see Figure 2-3). Note that comments are surrounded by **.

Figure 2-3. Installing Drush via the command line. This is highly useful when you have to install Drush on multiple servers, or for a new project.

2. Make Drush Executable

Now you venture into the command line. We hope that doesn't vex you, because Drush is a command line tool.

Open your Terminal. This opens up to your home directory, which corresponds to the Finder folder that bears your Mac username.

The path to your drush will depend upon where you put it.

You will want to type the command chmodu+x /path/to/drush/drush (replacing “/path/to/” with the actual path where you placed Drush). So in our case, with Drush residing in the dev folder, it's

Now that you've made Drush executable, you want to set things up so you actually can execute the drush command outside of the actual Drush folder (such as in the working folder for the site you're building).

3. Create an Alias

This part may seem a bit mysterious, but it's really quite simple. You will be adding to your bash profile file the path to the drush command so that you can run the drush command from anywhere in your files ystem.

A handy UNIX shortcut to your home folder is “~” (the tilde character). You can use that in any path designation.

Find your bash profile file using the Terminal in your home directory.

If you're not there, go ahead and enter on the command line:

The bash profile files are hidden from normal view, so to see what files you have in your home directory, enter this command:

You'll get a list of all the files in that folder, similar to that in Figure 2-4. The hidden files start with a dot (.), so look for one of these files:

Figure 2-4. Use thelscommand to list the files in your home folder.

Your bash profile can have any of these four names. If you don't see any of these in your home folder, create one using the nano editor (the really simple, old school text editor that comes with UNIX); nano will create the file if it doesn't find one with that name.

Any one will do, so just pick an existing file. (We picked .bash_profile.)

To edit the file, enter nano [filename]. For us, that means

This takes you into the editor. You might be looking at one or two lines of code. Cursor down to the end of the file; make sure you're on a new line, and add:

Replace the “/path/to/” part with the actual path—but this time it needs to be relative to the system root. Remember that shortcut to the home directory? Now is a time to use it (see Figure 2-5).

Figure 2-5. Another recommended approach to having the drush command at your fingertips: Add the path to the Drush folder to your shell's path, also done in a file such as .bash_profile or .profile.

Save the file using <control>-x, y(es), <enter>. Now you're back at your Terminal prompt.

Now all you need to do is reload the updated bash profile using source [filename]. In my case:

4. Test

Yes, we said it was three steps. But this is testing, an everpresent understood additional step. To test, type:

You should get a long list of available Drush commands. You're done! (Or rather, now you can get started!) See Figure 2-6 for details.

Figure 2-6. Success!

Now that you've got Drush installed, you can do all sorts of things that would take a long time through the Drupal interface. First, make sure you have a working Drupal installation on your system and navigate to it: cd /path/to/drupal. Now, need to install a module? Type drush dl projec tname. (Note that for Drush, the project name is the name of the folder containing the module or group of modules, not the human-readable module name. For example, if you want to install X-ray module, use its machine name xray.)Need to update your code? Type drush up. Be sure to check out Chapter 26 to see all the great things that Drush is capable of (and how you can extend it to do even more).

Git: Development Grease

Continually backing up your work is an essential practice for any web developer. Whether your workflow is based on downloading and installing modules, building custom themes, or writing code, putting everything in version control lets you focus on progress. You don't need to worry about taking the wrong route because you can always go back.

Version control is development grease. It makes everything run smoothly and helps you get in the zone. Chapter 14 discusses how to use version control (also called revision control)in achieving a state of optimal productivity.

Why Git?

There are many different version control systems for you to choose from. This book will focus on Git. Why? Because it's free, it's easy (ish) to use once you know a few basics, and Drupal.org has moved over to using it. This last part means that, once you get the hang of Git, contributing code to the community will be much easier. (And while getting the hang of Git—which will be a lifelong learning process—you can ask the Drupal community for help.)

Installing Git

To install Git, the first thing you'll need to do is grab the installer. You can find the Git software at git-scm.com. Download the installer appropriate to your OS, indicated by the handy icons on the right side of the page (see Figure 2-7).

Figure 2-7. The Git homepage. The box in the upper-right corner provides a quick way to download the Git code for your OS.

Follow the instructions on the website to install the Git software. Git is a command-line program, which means that you won't find it in your Applications folder. To access it, you have to go into Terminal. (The Windows installer adds an icon to your start menu, which launches a Git terminal for you.)Once you're in there, just type git. You should see a handy list of commands, much like you did when you typed drush previously (see Figure 2-8).

Figure 2-8. The git home screen within Terminal

Working with Git

Git is primarily a command line tool and is very easy to use on the command line. We recommend learning Git on the command-line first, before trying the visual tools. Knowing the command-line gives you a common vocabulary with other Drupal git users. The basic steps to get started are discussed in the following sections. It is possible, however, to find some clients that will create a GUI for you. See drupal.org/node/777182 for some examples, including SmartGit and (for Mac OS X only, proprietary) Tower (git-tower.com).

Bonus One-time Step: Identify Yourself

To properly identify yourself for every commit in case you share your code later, you should use these two commands:

You will only have to do this once.

Creating a Repository

In order to start using Git, the first thing you need to do is create a repository. This repository should be in your project folder. You create the repository with the command git init. (You can navigate to the folder using the command cd). This only needs to be done once per project.

We'll go over some of the additional commands here in a moment; but say you were starting with the DGD7 web site project you created in Chapter 1, you would use these commands in succession to create your repository:

This creates a new .git folder in your Drupal project (see Figure 2-9), which will store all of your code versions.

Figure 2-9. Creating your Git repository

While developing, it's important to put your code in the repository as early and often as possible. We recommend committing each time you make a change to your project, such as adding a module, updating the CSS on a site theme, or changing functionality in code. Once you've created a repository, all the files that you are working with are considered the working copy of that repository. It can be clean (all your changes are committed) or changed. Currently, with no files committed, it is considered in a changed state.

The first step to committing your code is to add it to “stage.” The stage temporarily holds your changes until you commit them. To add your changes to stage, use the command git add. from within your working copy of the site project. The final period is important—it tells Git to prepare to add everything that's changed in your code in that directory (and any directory nested below it) to the repository. You can see what you are about to commit (and what's still not staged for committing) with git status(see Figure 2-10).

Figure 2-10. Adding your DGD7 site code to stage and viewing the status

Next, you actually commit your code to the repository. This is done using the command git commit(see Figure 2-11). No path name is needed here; Git will commit everything that you just added. You can also add a message to your commit by using -m “Messagegoeshere” where “Messagegoeshere” is the text of your message. The message should inform anyone who downloads your code what they're downloading (e.g., “Initial build of DGD7 demo site”). In practice, the act of adding and committing code would happen in succession, like so:

Figure 2-11. Committing your DGD7 code for the first time

This will commit any code in your site that has changed since the last time you committed. It's worth noting that if you're adding code for the first time, the process might take some time; Git will be copying every file and piece of code to stage.

Ideally, you commit constantly (see Chapter 14). At the very least commit after you've made any major change to your site's files (for example, after downloading a module or theme) or periodically while writing custom modules for your site.

What to Do When Things Go Wrong—Throwing Away Changes and Reverting in Git

There are many ways to fix your mistakes in Git while you're developing. If, while you're developing, you realize that you don't want to save what you just did at all, and you haven't yet committed your changes, you can use the following command:

If you don't want to replace all of your code, but retrieve just one file, you can use the following command:

This command will restore filename.php to the last committed revision. If you've already committed your code, you can use this command

to return your code to the last committed revision. If you want to go back one further (i.e. the next-to-last revision), you can amend it to

Other Useful Git Commands

Now that you have the lay of the land, here are some other Git commands that you might find useful:

• git status shows what you're about to commit.
• git log provides a list of what you've committed. Variations of this command, such as git log --pretty=oneline, are a lot more practical. And git log --pretty=oneline -n5 gives you the last 5 commits, useful when you have hundreds. Also, “:q” might have to be typed in order to get back to the command line after viewing the log.
• git checkout mymodule.info lets you check out (i.e., download) a specific file or revision.

For a full list of Git commands, type man git into Terminal.

Database Backup Tools

While Git will help you keep your files and code backed up via version control, it is also important to back up your database regularly. This is vitally important for a site being used by other people, such as clients. Since much of Drupal websites (including content) resides in the database, not backing up could have serious consequences if things go wrong.

The Drupal Git Backup Drush script, available at github.com/scor/dgb, can be used to easily export the database tables you care about and commit them to version control. This is covered more in Chapter 12.

If the setup is too much for you—heck, even if you do nothing else in this chapter—please install the Backup and Migrate module (drupal.org/project/backup_migrate), which will allow you to easily and regularly back up your entire database into a folder that you set up in the configuration settings.

Another way of backing up your database using Drush directly is the command

drush sql-dump > /path/to/filename.sql