MixLab

This handbook covers MixLab through the mix command line. If you would rather work in a graphical interface, you already have one: every installer places the MixLab window beside the command line. Both drive the same MixEngine underneath, so everything in this handbook still applies.

MixLab is a local web development environment. It runs several versions of PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go and Java 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. MixLab writes the configuration itself, 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. A few operations need an administrator: a line in the hosts file, a certificate in the system store, permission to listen on port 80. MixLab asks for them once, together, and a helper does them and exits as soon as it is done.

Start here

• Installing MixLab: 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, Ruby, Go and Java 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 MixLab asks permission for: every prompt, and what each one changes.
• Keeping MixLab current: updates are opt-in, signed, and rehearsed.
• Removing MixLab: 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.

MixLab 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/mixlab/en/index.md