Environment Setup

Docker Setup (Laravel Sail)

What is Docker? Imagine you are baking a cake. Traditional Way: You buy flour, eggs, and an oven and put them in your kitchen (Your Computer). If you make a mess, your kitchen gets dirty. Docker Way: You buy a "Magic Box". Inside the box is a pre-built kitchen with all the ingredients. You step into the box, bake the cake, and step out. Your actual kitchen stays clean. Docker creates these "Magic Boxes" (called Containers) that have PHP, MySQL, and everything else pre-installed.

Pros & Cons

✅ Pros: No need to install PHP/MySQL on your actual computer. Matches the "Production" server perfectly.
❌ Cons: Can be slower on Windows/Mac. Steeper learning curve.

Using Laravel Sail

Laravel comes with a tool called Sail, which is a light command-line interface for interacting with Docker.

Prerequisites

Docker Desktop: Download and install from docker.com.
WSL2 (Windows Only): If on Windows, you must ensure Docker is using the WSL2 backend.

How to Run

Instead of running php artisan serve, you use Sail:

Navigate to project:
```
cd PhilexScholarV2
```
Start Containers:
```
./vendor/bin/sail up
```
This downloads and starts PHP, MySQL, and Redis containers.
Run Commands: Instead of typing php artisan migrate, you type:
```
./vendor/bin/sail artisan migrate
```

Is this for me?

If you are a beginner, we recommend the Native Method (Herd/php.new) first. Use Docker once you are comfortable with the basics.

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