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Additional Service Configurations & Add-ons

DDEV projects can be extended to provide additional add-ons, including services. You can define these add-ons using docker-compose files in the project’s .ddev directory.

Anyone can create their own services with a .ddev/docker-compose.*.yaml file, and a growing number of popular services are supported and tested, and can be installed using the ddev get command.

Use ddev get --list to see available add-ons. To see all possible add-ons (not necessarily supported or tested), use ddev get --list --all.

For example,

→  ddev get --list
┌──────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ADD-ON                               │ DESCRIPTION                                      │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-adminer                    │ Adminer service for DDEV*                        │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-beanstalkd                 │ Beanstalkd for DDEV*                             │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-browsersync                │ Auto-refresh HTTPS page on changes with DDEV*    │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-cron                       │ Schedule commands to execute within DDEV*        │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-drupal9-solr               │ Drupal 9 Apache Solr installation for DDEV*      │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-elasticsearch              │ Elasticsearch add-on for DDEV*                   │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-memcached                  │ Install Memcached as an extra service in DDEV*   │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-mongo                      │ MongoDB add-on for DDEV*                         │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-pdfreactor                 │ PDFreactor service for DDEV*                     │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-proxy-support              │ Support HTTP/HTTPS proxies with DDEV*            │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-redis                      │ Redis service for DDEV*                          │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-redis-commander            │ Redis Commander for use with DDEV Redis service* │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-selenium-standalone-chrome │ A DDEV service for running standalone Chrome*    │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ drud/ddev-varnish                    │ Varnish reverse proxy add-on for DDEV*           │
└──────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Add-ons marked with '*' are official, maintained DDEV add-ons.

Tip

If you need a service not provided here, see Defining an Additional Service with Docker Compose.

Officially-supported add-ons:

Creating an Additional Service for ddev get

Anyone can create an add-on for ddev get. See this screencast and instructions in ddev-addon-template:

  1. Click “Use this template” on ddev-addon-template.
  2. Create a new repository.
  3. Test it and preferably make sure it has valid tests in tests.bats.
  4. When it’s working and tested, create a release.
  5. Add the ddev-get label and a good short description to the GitHub repository.
  6. When you’re ready for the add-on to become official, open an issue in the DDEV issue queue requesting upgrade to official. You’ll be expected to maintain it, and subscribe to all activity and be responsive to questions.

Sections and Features of ddev-get Add-On install.yaml

The install.yaml is a simple YAML file with a few main sections:

  • pre_install_actions: an array of Bash statements or scripts to be executed before project_files are installed. The actions are executed in the context of the target project’s root directory.
  • project_files: an array of files or directories to be copied from the add-on into the target project’s .ddev directory.
  • global_files: is an array of files or directories to be copied from the add-on into the target system’s global .ddev directory (~/.ddev/).
  • post_install_actions: an array of Bash statements or scripts to be executed after project_files and global_files are installed. The actions are executed in the context of the target project’s root directory.
  • yaml_read_files: a map of name: file of YAML files to be read from the target project’s root directory. The contents of these YAML files may be used as templated actions within pre_install_actions and post_install_actions.

In any stanza of pre_install_actions and post_install_actions you can:

  • Use #ddev-nodisplay on a line to suppress any output.
  • Use #ddev-description:<some description of what stanza is doing> to instruct DDEV to output a description of the action it's taking.

You can see a simple install.yaml in ddev-addon-template’s install.yaml.

Environment Variable Replacements

Simple environment variables will be replaced in install.yaml as part of filenames. This can include environment variables in the context where DDEV run, as well as the standard environment variables provided to custom host commands, like DDEV_APPROOT, DDEV_DOCROOT, etc. For example, if a file in project_files is listed as somefile.${DDEV_PROJECT}.txt with a project named d10, the file named somefile.d10.txt will be copied from the add-on into the project.

Template Action Replacements (Advanced)

A number of additional replacements can be made using Go template replacement techniques, using the format {{ .some-gotemplate-action }}. These are mostly for use of YAML information pulled into yaml_read_files. A map of values from each YAML file is placed in a map headed by the name of the YAML file. For example, if a YAML file named example_yaml.yaml:

value1: xxx

is referenced using

yaml_read_files:
  example: example_yaml.yaml

then value1 can be used throughout the install.yaml as {{ example.value1 }} and it will be replaced with the value xxx.

More exotic template-based replacements can be seen in an advanced test example.

Go templating resources:

Additional services in ddev-contrib (MongoDB, Elasticsearch, etc)

Commonly-used services will be migrated from the ddev-contrib repository to individual, tested, supported repositories, but the repository already has a wealth of additional examples and instructions:

Your pull requests to integrate other services are welcome at ddev-contrib.

Last update: November 30, 2022