Drupal Core patch testing locally with Lando

Testing patches for Drupal core can be fiddly, but it's a process worth making easy so we can better engage in upstream fixes.

Here's my current approach (as of 2021).

Prerequisites

You'll need Lando installed, which requires Docker as well.

Upstream codebase

I keep a long-lived copy of the Drupal core codebase in ~/Projects/drupal-core. This is a git clone of https://git.drupalcode.org/project/drupal.git and the workflow is either to create patches for upload (old style) or use Gitlab's merge requests (new style) to submit proposed changes.

So, step one: clone a copy of Drupal core! Note that I change the cloned repo name to "drupal-core" for my own sanity.

cd ~/Projects # or whereever you'd like to keep it
git clone --branch=9.4.x https://git.drupalcode.org/project/drupal.git drupal-core

You can switch between branches of upstream, but we want to default to the current dev branch for proposed changes. Most patches will apply to your current version.

Local Lando environment

I like Lando and this setup works for me. We need to add a handful of files into the core codebase, and then not accidentally commit those files. These files are:

• .lando.yml
• .lando.base.yml
• phpunit.xml
• sites/default/settings.php

It may feel unfamiliar that the Drupal core codebase has the codebase as the root of the repo - there's no web/ subdirectory. For projects, we use the web/ subdirectory, but for core, we don't use that. 🤷 It's OK!

Additions

These are the files I put into the Drupal codebase:

.lando.yml

This file and the next could be combined, and in this project there's little advantage to the separation. However, I track these Lando configs across multiple projects, so the separation is an advantage to me in that I can copy changes to the base file more easily across various Drupal projects.

name: drupal-core
config:
  # Change to `true` and run `lando rebuild` to enable XDebug.
  xdebug: false

.lando.base.yml

name: unconfigured
recipe: drupal9
env_file:
  - .env
config:
  webroot: .
  database: mysql
  via: nginx
services:
  appserver:
    build_as_root:
      - apt update && apt install libxslt1-dev -y && docker-php-ext-install xsl
    build:
      - composer install --prefer-dist
  mailhog:
    type: mailhog
  node:
    type: node:14
tooling:
  phpunit:
    service: appserver
    cmd: "php /app/vendor/bin/phpunit -c /app/phpunit.xml"
  phpcs-install:
    service: appserver
    cmd:
      - composer require --dev squizlabs/php_codesniffer
      - phpcs --config-set installed_paths /app/vendor/drupal/coder/coder_sniffer
  phpcs:
    service: appserver
    cmd: /app/vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=Drupal,DrupalPractice
  phpcbf:
    service: appserver
    cmd: /app/vendor/bin/phpcbf --standard=Drupal,DrupalPractice
  site-install:
    service: appserver
    cmd: drush site:install -y

phpunit.xml

This configures PHPUnit to run in this environment.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- TODO set checkForUnintentionallyCoveredCode="true" once https://www.drupal.org/node/2626832 is resolved. -->
<!-- PHPUnit expects functional tests to be run with either a privileged user
 or your current system user. See core/tests/README.md and
 https://www.drupal.org/node/2116263 for details.
-->
<phpunit xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" bootstrap="/app/core/tests/bootstrap.php" colors="true" beStrictAboutTestsThatDoNotTestAnything="true" beStrictAboutOutputDuringTests="true" beStrictAboutChangesToGlobalState="true" failOnWarning="true" printerClass="\Drupal\Tests\Listeners\HtmlOutputPrinter" cacheResult="false" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="https://schema.phpunit.de/9.3/phpunit.xsd">
  <php>
    <!-- Set error reporting to E_ALL. -->
    <ini name="error_reporting" value="32767"/>
    <!-- Do not limit the amount of memory tests take to run. -->
    <ini name="memory_limit" value="-1"/>
    <!-- Example SIMPLETEST_BASE_URL value: http://localhost -->
    <env name="SIMPLETEST_BASE_URL" value="http://appserver_nginx" force="true"/>
    <!-- Example SIMPLETEST_DB value: mysql://username:password@localhost/databasename#table_prefix -->
    <env name="SIMPLETEST_DB" value=""/>
    <!-- Example BROWSERTEST_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY value: /path/to/webroot/sites/simpletest/browser_output -->
    <env name="BROWSERTEST_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY" value=""/>
    <!-- To have browsertest output use an alternative base URL. For example if
     SIMPLETEST_BASE_URL is an internal DDEV URL, you can set this to the
     external DDev URL so you can follow the links directly.
    -->
    <env name="BROWSERTEST_OUTPUT_BASE_URL" value=""/>
    <!-- To disable deprecation testing completely uncomment the next line. -->
    <!-- <env name="SYMFONY_DEPRECATIONS_HELPER" value="disabled"/> -->
    <!-- Example for changing the driver class for mink tests MINK_DRIVER_CLASS value: 'Drupal\FunctionalJavascriptTests\DrupalSelenium2Driver' -->
    <env name="MINK_DRIVER_CLASS" value=""/>
    <!-- Example for changing the driver args to mink tests MINK_DRIVER_ARGS value: '["http://127.0.0.1:8510"]' -->
    <env name="MINK_DRIVER_ARGS" value=""/>
    <!-- Example for changing the driver args to webdriver tests MINK_DRIVER_ARGS_WEBDRIVER value: '["chrome", { "chromeOptions": { "w3c": false } }, "http://localhost:4444/wd/hub"]' For using the Firefox browser, replace "chrome" with "firefox" -->
    <env name="MINK_DRIVER_ARGS_WEBDRIVER" value=""/>
  </php>
  <testsuites>
    <testsuite name="unit">
      <file>./core/tests/TestSuites/UnitTestSuite.php</file>
    </testsuite>
    <testsuite name="kernel">
      <file>./core/tests/TestSuites/KernelTestSuite.php</file>
    </testsuite>
    <testsuite name="functional">
      <file>./core/tests/TestSuites/FunctionalTestSuite.php</file>
    </testsuite>
    <testsuite name="functional-javascript">
      <file>./core/tests/TestSuites/FunctionalJavascriptTestSuite.php</file>
    </testsuite>
    <testsuite name="build">
      <file>./core/tests/TestSuites/BuildTestSuite.php</file>
    </testsuite>
  </testsuites>
  <listeners>
    <listener class="\Drupal\Tests\Listeners\DrupalListener">
    </listener>
  </listeners>
  <!-- Filter for coverage reports. -->
</phpunit>

sites/default/settings.php

//$settings['config_sync_directory'] = '../config/drupal/sync';
$databases['default']['default'] = array (
  'database' => 'drupal9',
  'username' => 'drupal9',
  'password' => 'drupal9',
  'prefix' => '',
  'host' => 'database',
  'port' => '',
  'namespace' => 'Drupal\\Core\\Database\\Driver\\mysql',
  'driver' => 'mysql',
);

How to use it

With these in place, I should be able to execute lando start and bring up a workable Drupal 9 site.

More importantly, I should be able to execute lando phpunit to run core tests.

I'll now follow the instructions from the issue to check out a local working branch with the existing MR or patch applied.

I can use PHPUnit's --group and --filter to run specific tests (eg those related to the issue, or those already failing).