Installing Laravel 4.1 in Windows 7 // Make .phar file globally available to windows command line

Question

i have some problems installing Laravel 4.1 in Windows 7 via the first method explained in the Laravel documentation ( http://laravel.com/docs/installation#install-laravel )

Answer 1

The documentation on the Laravel website is not a good way to install laravel on windows. You'll got problem with the routing later.

Accessing laravel URL like this is a no-no:

http://localhost/new_project/laravel/public/

to get a better URL you must setup Apache Virtual Host and edit hosts file.

The best way to install Laravel on windows is to use Git and Composer. if you already successfully install Git and Composer, open Git bash and using ls and cd terminal command go to c:\xampp\htdocs folder

and run this command (it will ask you for your Git passphrase, make sure you install your Git properly - tutorial here - http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2012/02/git-for-windows/):

git clone git@github.com:laravel/laravel.git laraveldev

It will download laravel into a folder name laraveldev in htdocs:

c:\xampp\htdocs\laraveldev

Use the Git bash terminal to install laravel into PHP using this command:

composer install

edit hosts file - located in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc, add this:

127.0.0.1 www.laravel.dev

and put virtual hosts entry in c:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf.

    DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/laraveldev/public"
    ServerName www.laravel.dev
    ServerAlias www.laravel.dev
    ErrorLog "logs/laravel.log"
    CustomLog "logs/custom.laravel.log" combined
    
        AllowOverride All
        Order Allow,Deny
        Allow from all
        Require all granted
    

Restart you xampp apache. Then you can access laravel app in your browser like this:

http://www.laravel.dev

I'm totally 100% sure you'll got those "You have arrived" text :D