Prepare for local environment setup

To develop, deploy, and test Magento Commerce Cloud, you need to setup your local environment and clone your project’s master Git branch. This local environment provides a development system for your custom code, extensions, and configurations to push for active testing in one of the Integration environments.

This section walks through the steps for first time merchants with Magento, Magento SIs, and existing Magento merchants moving to the cloud. If you already completed some of these steps or have an existing Magento developer environment, review the following for expected results and continue to the next step. Some configurations and workflows differ for Magento Commerce than a typical Enterprise Edition installation.

Set up an account

To begin working with a project and develop your store, you should have received an e-mail invitation to create a Magento Commerce Cloud account. The account provides access to your project for Magento development and deployment across all supported environments.

You should receive an e-mail invitation to verify and access the project. If you do not see the invitation, check your junk e-mail folder. Click the Verify my account option in the email to verify and access your project account.

When logged in, your project should open with a master branch to work with.

If your Cloud account has access to multiple projects, you should see a list of projects. Select the specific project you are preparing to access and work on.

Magento specific tools

When working on your local, you will be accessing the Magento Cloud CLI to issue commands and programmatically complete tasks and the Magento Admin for the store UI and configurations.

You need to set up the Magento file system owner on your local to assign that user as the owner for all created files and directories. For more information, see Overview of ownership and permissions.

This guide assumes you’re working on a UNIX system or in a UNIX shell environment. For MAC OS and Linux-based systems, feel free to use any CLI tools of choice for issuing commands. For Windows users, we recommend a UNIX environment like Cygwin, Putty, or Git Bash.

For development on your local, use any development environment or tools you prefer. For recommendations, many Magento developers use tools including WebStorm, PhpStorm, and Atom.

Developing code for Magento Commerce requires working in Git branches. Not everyone remembers Git commands with ease. If you want a Git client, use any client of your choice. Some developers use clients including GitKraken and SmartGit.

Prerequisites

Have the following prepared to complete your initial workspace and project setup:

  • Magento Commerce Cloud account with an added user account
  • Magento authentication keys from Magento Marketplace. If the Project Owner or Technical Lead created the project according to these instructions, the Magento authentication keys should already be installed and available in the auth.json file in the code repository.

Get started

You should be ready to go! The following sections provide a link to the previous step, instructions, and a link to the next step to start developing:

  • Install all prerequisite software and tools on your host system (laptop, desktop, etc) and local workspace (VM)
  • Install Magento Cloud CLI
  • Set up SSH keys
  • Configure the Magento file system owner (optional)
  • Clone and branch the project
  • Install Magento
  • Complete configurations and file/folder permissions
  • Verify install, branches, and get to coding!

For Pro projects, you also should deploy across to Staging and Production as part of your set up.

Next step

Install Magento prerequisites