Define and document what this project is and isn't for

[phenaproxima]

Lest the scope begin to creep, we should explicitly define and document in our README what this launcher is for, and what it's not for. It's not meant to be a replacement for a full local development environment like DDEV, or even a relatively lightweight one like MAMP or Laravel Herd. I conceived it as a graphical version of Drupal core's quick-start command.

I think we should make a product-level decision fairly early, probably at or before DrupalCon Atlanta: what directions should we take this launcher in? Which directions should we avoid? I'm incredibly easy to nerdsnipe, so I'm not the one to control the scope. But it would be really good to have a strong decision about what the scope is and where to go if you have needs we won't address with this launcher.

[pameeela]

I don't think we should make too many long term decisions before it's actually launched. This is somewhat of a proof of concept, both whether we could do this (we can) and whether anyone wants this or will use it (we still don't know yet).

If we had unlimited time and bandwidth, I would love to continue working on this, but in the context of what else is going on I think we should pause here for now and see how it goes over post DrupalCon.

[phenaproxima]

I'm okay with pausing development for now, apart from styling and minor bug fixes. I agree it's a proof of concept.

The reason I raise this as something to have on our radar, frankly, is because the initial reactions I've gotten from folks I've shared this with have been overwhelmingly positive and I suspect we'll see a much larger wave of enthusiasm in Atlanta. So we might want to at least be ready to put up some "fences" before this gets shown to the world in a Driesnote.

[eojthebrave]

Some thoughts about this as I'm trying to write documentation to include in the Drupal CMS User Guide related to this launcher now that it is official.

In the docs we need to provide some clarity about who this is, and isn't, for to help people decide what approach they should use. It should be clear when they should use this launcher vs. ddev vs. the in-browser trial.

Right now this seems to be a good solution for someone who wants to try out Drupal CMS locally, and to be able to come back and mess with their site later, as part of a learning and evaluations process. But not ideal for someone who wants to build a site, and then eventually move that site to a hosting provider. Primarily because this uses sqlLite, and most providers are likely using MariaDB/MySQL. So there's not an easy way to take your DB from this local install and move it somewhere else.

[phenaproxima]

After some chatting in Slack with ckrina and @goba, I think having a documented strategy and roadmap would be a great idea. Probably something to be discussed at or around DrupalCon Vienna.