Acquia Drupal Stack Installer
Need technical support for the stack installer? See the Acquia Drupal Stack - FAQ for details.
The Acquia Drupal Stack Installer
The Acquia Drupal Stack installer is a Drupal-specific xAMP installer, or "DAMP". It is the fastest way to set up Acquia Drupal to run locally on your Windows or Mac computer.
In just a few clicks, you have a full Acquia Drupal website up-and-running on your computer. With a few clicks more, you can install more. You can use these sites to evaluate Acquia Drupal, add and test other Drupal components, workflows and functionality - and even get things wrong without worrying about ruining a live, production website.
Supported Operating Systems - The Acquia Drupal Stack Installer has been tested to run on Macs running OS 10.6 or OS 10.5 (Intel-based, not PowerPC) as well as 32-bit Windows XP, Vista, 2003 Server, and Windows 7.
Acquia Drupal is a packaged distribution of the open source Drupal social publishing system. A collection of essential software from the Drupal community, Acquia Drupal provides a quick on-ramp to begin building Drupal websites.
For more information, see About Acquia Drupal and the Acquia Network documentation index.
Acquia Drupal DAMP Stack Components
The Acquia Drupal "DAMP" stack consists of the following components:
- Acquia Drupal - a packaged distribution of the open source Drupal social publishing system.
- Apache Web server - The world's most popular web server
- MySQL Database Server - The world's most popular database server
- PHP - The language that powers Drupal
- PhpMyAdmin - A popular in-browser database management tool
- Acquia Drupal Control Panel - The control panel shows the status of the stack's Apache and MySQL servers, allows you to start and stop them, and gives you access to your local Acquia Drupal website, phpMyAdmin and the settings window of the control panel itself.
- XMail Server (Windows only) - Allows your locally installed site to send e-mail directly. This is important for password reset, testing, and other functionality. (Mac OS X comes with this functionality built in.)
A full listing of PHP extensions and variables is available once the DAMP stack is installed on your system. Open "Settings" on the control panel, go to the "Config" tab, click the "phpinfo" link. PHP.info will open in your browser:
OK, here's a really silly
OK, here's a really silly question that I don't see answered anywhere. OS X has an apache 2.x, mysql 5.x, and php 5.x ALREADY installed. Why on earth do I need to install all of that again ? Not to mention, I already have a ton of stuff that's using that stuff now...so I guess my question is really simple, can't I install just the base components of your distribution WITHOUT disturbing my installs of apache, mysql, and php that exist already ?????
jam - Senior Wr...
Why use Acquia's DAMP
Why use Acquia's DAMP stack?
To address this very broadly, you might want to use the Acquia Drupal Stack Installer and control panel for the same reason you might install any other development tools on your Mac: comfort, convenience, and so on. They make installing multiple, local Acquia Drupal websites very fast and easy. You can use the sites it makes for you for rapid feature- or module-testing, site development and much more.
DAMP Stack Components
The Acquia "DAMP" stack provides versions of the AMP components that are recommended and tuned for use with Drupal and are potentially more recent than the Mac OS X versions. For instance, OS 10.5 comes with PHP 5.2.8 (but is missing the GD library) while the DAMP stack currently runs PHP 5.2.9. OS X does not come with MySQL out of the box, you must have installed it at some point along the way yourself. OS X doesn't offer anything like the Acquia Drupal Stack Control Panel application, of course, which takes care of routine tasks like database creation, basic Drupal settings and so on.
Advantages of Acquia's Components
One very important advantage of using the Acquia-provided components rather than those delivered on your Mac is that you can change or remove them easily any time you wish without worrying about messing up anything that is part of your underlying operating system. Furthermore, Mac OS X updates could change configurations that you may have made to the OS components. You're better off avoiding anything that could conflict or interfere Drupal development process. Nonetheless, a DAMP installation does not affect any other instances of apache, mysql or php that are already running on your system as long as you configure the MySQL and Apache ports so they don't conflict.
Use Whatever You Like Best!
If you are more comfortable working with another set of tools, Acquia also provides standard .tar.gz and .zip archives of Acquia Drupal for installation and use alongside the Mac and Windows stack installers. You might also be interested in developing Drupal sites using the Acquia Drupal SVN repository.
- jam | Jeffrey A. McGuire | Senior Writer, Evangelist | jam@acquia.com
Jeffrey, What I am actually
Jeffrey,
What I am actually concerned about with your installer that needs to be addressed in some way, shape or form, and you really haven't Jeffrey, is let's take the example of my install of MySQL 5.2, your installer would overwrite that install, thereby deleting all the data in those databases. That's what I'm most concerned about, otherwise I'd install your software. Furthermore, OS X's version of Apache is the most stable. Your install would overwrite that, thereby deleting a whole bunch of conf files that I've already got installed, mind you I could back them up...but still.
You see what I'm getting at ? I'm wondering just how difficult it would be to make your installer components OPTIONAL. But make it clear that these components are required for optimum performance of your version of Drupal.
Miles.
jam - Senior Wr...
No conflicts, no
No conflicts, no overwrites
The beauty of using the Acquia Drupal Stack Installer (aka "DAMP stack") - alongside the ease of use, Drupal-optimization, etc. that I mentioned before - is that we *do* install our own versions of all the components *and never touch any others you may have installed*. This allow you to install, develop, test, configure, and uninstall to your heart's content and never cause conflicts with or make changes to your other, existing components, stacks and versions.
You can even run "your" stack and the Damp stack side-by-side as long as you configure the Apache and MySQL ports to stay out of each others' way.
Just to make sure I am being clear: our installer will not overwrite your MySQL or Apache installations - the DAMP stack puts all its components in its own directory ([user]/Applications/acquia-drupal). I have no experience in the the stability of various versions of Apache, but you can (*and should*) of course keep your own for other projects and purposes beyond Drupal. As I understand it, this obviates the need to make any of the DAMP components optional, since they do not interfere with any others on your system.
- jam | Jeffrey A. McGuire | Senior Writer, Evangelist | jam@acquia.com
Kent Lester
Many other wamp stacks allow
Many other wamp stacks allow one to run the stack without going through the Windows installer, thereby making it easy to uninstall or move the entire stack. Want to uninstall? Just delete the directory. Want to move the stack to another computer? Just place the stack on a USB stick.
Does the Acquia stack work this way, or does one have to install it via the Windows registry?
jam - Senior Wr...
The installer currently
The installer currently installs Apache and MySQL as Windows services, which means that they can start up even before a user has logged in, if desired. This functionality requires using the registry.
There has been a feature request to allow DAMP to install those items as regular programs (not services), which would eliminate any registry requirement, but we have not committed that feature to our pipeline yet.
If this is a feature you'd like to see, I suggest you make a similar request.
- jam | Jeffrey A. McGuire | Senior Writer, Evangelist | jam@acquia.com
Hi, Can someone show me how
Hi,
Can someone show me how to setup/configure xmail server to work under Acquia?
Thank you
jam - Senior Wr...
When installing the Acquia
paul brisse - Ready for a
paul brisse -
Ready for a first download of Drupal 6.19 on my Windows Vista target environment
Is somebody there to confirm the best way to do ...
1) Download first the Drupal stack installer
then
2) Download the Acquia Drupal full install (.zip)
Is this Ok ?
Thanks for your answer
jam - Senior Wr...
It is actually very, very
It is actually very, very simple: download the stack installer package for Windows, install it. Acquia Drupal is on board and the first site is set up as part of the installation process.
- jam | Jeffrey A. McGuire | Senior Writer, Evangelist | jam@acquia.com