MixEngine

This handbook covers MixEngine through the mix command line. If you would rather work in a graphical interface, download the MixDB app at https://lab.mixnz.com/#mixdb. MixDB drives the same MixEngine, so everything in this handbook still applies.

MixEngine is a local web development environment. It runs several versions of PHP, Node.js, Python and Ruby side by side and lets a directory choose which one it uses; it runs the web server, databases and caches your projects need; and it gives every site a real name like https://blog.test with a certificate your browser trusts. There is no Docker, no virtual machine and no configuration file to write by hand — the generated configuration is MixEngine's business, and nothing it runs stays behind as a root process.

It is one daemon and one command. mixengined owns everything MixEngine knows and supervises everything it runs; mix is what you type. The few operations that need an administrator — a line in the hosts file, a certificate in the system store, permission to listen on port 80 — are asked for once, together, and by a helper that exits as soon as it is done.

Start here

• Installing MixEngine — the file for your system, and what it does and does not touch.
• Your first site — from a fresh install to a green padlock, in about five minutes.

The handbook

• Projects and sites — the two nouns, and how a checkout carries its own setup.
• PHP, Node, Python and Ruby versions — several at once, chosen per directory.
• Servers, databases and caches — what your project runs against.
• Names and the padlock — why blog.test resolves, and what signed it.
• Showing a site to your phone — one site on the local network, and back off again.
• Blueprints — write down what a project is made of, and set it up again elsewhere.
• Extensions — phpMyAdmin, Mailpit and the rest, from a signed registry.
• What MixEngine asks permission for — every prompt, and what each one changes.
• Keeping MixEngine current — updates are opt-in, signed, and rehearsed.
• Removing MixEngine — and how to check nothing was left behind.
• When something is wrong — mix doctor first.
• Command reference — every command and flag, generated from the program itself.

For programs

• Reading this as a program — every page as plain Markdown, a manifest, and the same bytes offline in mix docs.

Every page here is written in English and in Vietnamese, and every page is also published as plain Markdown at a predictable address. The same pages are compiled into the mix binary itself, so mix docs answers on a machine with no network and no running daemon — which is the state in which somebody most often needs to read this.

MixEngine runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and every page here applies to all three. Where a system genuinely differs, the page says which one it is talking about.

This page as Markdown: https://mixnz.github.io/mixengine/en/index.md