PHP Development Setup on Windows with WSL2

Daniel Opitz
Daniel Opitz
01 Dec 2024

It looks like XAMPP is no longer actively maintained, which makes this a good time to rethink how we set up PHP development environments on Windows.

If you’ve been frustrated with the performance of Docker, you are not alone. I think many find it too slow for this kind of work.

A much better option is Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) . It’s fast, optimized, and offers a clean way to run a modern LAMP stack.

Here is how to get started with WSL2 and set up a PHP development environment that’s efficient and easy to use.

Setting Up WSL2

First, install WSL2 by running the following in command:

wsl --install

Follow the prompts to create a username and password.

Once inside your WSL2 environment, update and upgrade the system:

sudo apt update  
sudo apt upgrade

Install Apache and PHP

sudo apt install apache2

Add a repository for the latest PHP versions:

sudo apt install software-properties-common  
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php  
sudo apt update

Automate PHP Installation with a Script

Let’s create a simple script to install PHP and configure the environment:

  1. Create a new file:
touch phpsetup.sh  
vim phpsetup.sh
  1. Add this content to the file:

Press INSERT to enter in edit mode.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

apt update
apt install vim unzip -y
apt install libapache2-mod-php8.4 php8.4 php8.4-cgi -y
apt install mysql-client libmysqlclient-dev -y
apt install php8.4-mysql php8.4-sqlite3 -y
apt install php8.4-mbstring php8.4-curl php8.4-intl php8.4-gd php8.4-zip php8.4-bz2 -y
apt install php8.4-dom php8.4-xml php8.4-soap php8.4-xdebug

a2enmod php8.4
a2enmod rewrite
a2enmod actions

sed -i '170,174 s/AllowOverride None/AllowOverride All/g' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf  

service apache2 restart  

cd ~  
php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"  
php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer  
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"  
composer self-update

  1. Save and exit (ESC, then :wq).

  2. Make the script executable and run it:

sudo chmod +x phpsetup.sh  
sudo ./phpsetup.sh

For development only: give full write access:

sudo chmod -R a+rwx /var/www/html/

Optional: Install net-tools:

apt install net-tools

Testing your Setup

Visit the WSL host in your browser: http://wsl.localhost/

You should see the Apache demo page.

Accessing Files on WSL

You can access the file system from Windows directly at the \\wsl.localhost and \\wsl$ path.

\\wsl.localhost

Accessing Windows files on WSL

To mount a Windows drive into a WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) instance, you can use the built-in capabilities of WSL2, which automatically makes Windows drives accessible.

By default, WSL automatically mounts all Windows drives under /mnt/<DriveLetter>.

Open your WSL terminal and navigate to the desired drive:

cd /mnt/c
ls

Mounting the Apache DocumentRoot to a Windows drive

WSL lets you serve files directly from your Windows drive, while executing PHP scripts within the WSL environment (with Apache).

Make sure the path /var/www/html does not exists. In this case I rename the existing folder.

sudo mv /var/www/html /var/www/html_backup

The ln -s command creates a symbolic link:

sudo ln -s /mnt/c/xampp/htdocs /var/www/html

Change to Windows path accordingly.

Once the symbolic link is set up in WSL, you can access the Windows directory C:\xampp\htdocs from WSL at /var/www/html.

Visit the WSL host in your browser to check the result: http://wsl.localhost/

Some useful WSL commands

Start WSL

wsl

Shutdown all WSL virtual machines.

wsl --shutdown

List installed Linux distributions with status:

wsl --list --verbose

Read more