In-Container Home Directory and Shell Configuration¶

Custom shell configuration (Bash or your preferred shell), your usual Git configuration, a Composer auth.json and more can be achieved within your containers.

Place all your dotfiles in your global~/.ddev/homeadditions or your project’s .ddev/homeadditions directory and DDEV will use these in your project’s web containers.

On ddev start, DDEV attempts to create a user inside the web and db containers with the same name and user ID as the one you have on the host machine.

DDEV looks for the homeadditions directory both in the global ~/.ddev/homeadditions directory and the project-level .ddev/homeadditions directory, and will copy their contents recursively into the in-container home directory during ddev start. Project homeadditions contents override the global homeadditions.

Usage examples:

• If you use Git inside the container, you may want to symlink your ~/.gitconfig into ~/.ddev/homeadditions or the project’s .ddev/homeadditions so that in-container git commands use whatever username and email you’ve configured on your host machine. For example, ln -s ~/.gitconfig ~/.ddev/homeadditions/.gitconfig.

• If you use SSH inside the container and want to use your .ssh/config, consider mkdir -p ~/.ddev/homeadditions/.ssh && ln -s ~/.ssh/config ~/.ddev/homeadditions/.ssh/config. Some people will be able to symlink their entire .ssh directory, ln -s ~/.ssh ~/.ddev/homeadditions/ssh. If you provide your own .ssh/config though, please make sure it includes these lines:

  UserKnownHostsFile=/home/.ssh-agent/known_hosts
  StrictHostKeyChecking=no
  

• If you need to add a script or other executable component into the project (or global configuration), you can put it in the project or global .ddev/homeadditions/bin directory and ~/bin/<script will be created inside the container. This is useful for adding a script to one project or every project, or for overriding standard scripts, as ~/bin is first in the $PATH in the web container.

• If you use private, password-protected Composer repositories with Satis, for example, and use a global auth.json, you might want to mkdir -p ~/.ddev/homeadditions/.composer && ln -s ~/.composer/auth.json ~/.ddev/homeadditions/.composer/auth.json, but be careful that you exclude it from getting checked in by using a .gitignore or equivalent.
• You can add small scripts to the .bashrc.d directory and they will be executed on ddev ssh. For example, add a ~/.ddev/homeadditions/.bashrc.d/whereami containing echo "I am in the $(hostname) container" and (after ddev restart) when you ddev ssh that will be executed.
• If you have a favorite .bashrc, copy it into either the global or project homeadditions.

• If you like the traditional ll bash alias for ls -l, add a .ddev/homeadditions/.bash_aliases with these contents:

  alias ll="ls -lhA"