Escalating the Drupal mountain using Chirripo toolset
Tags: docker, drupal
Published: 2020-05-27 03:31:04

We are happy to announce the launch of Chirripo 1.0.0!

Starting a Drupal project can be challenging, there is a lot we need to add and configure to have a working environment in which we can successfully run our projects. Sometimes, the process takes a long time and some issues may arise. There are a lot of tools out in the market that we can use and they make our life easier, but most of them are really opinionated and it takes a lot of effort to be able to customize them accordingly to our needs, sometimes they already have a lot of overload and we may not need all of that. 

It is because of this that Chirripo was born, it was created as our solution to have a highly customizable and easy to use development environment that people can add to their existing projects in a really easy way, something that people can customize just by defining some environment variables without the need of knowing it all since the beginning. 

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/emwk6c98whyyqhq31dvn.png)

When we are working with Drupal there are a lot of tools we may need, for example: caching systems, email testing tools, search servers, environments for automated testing, profiling and debugging tools and more. The journey for configuring them all so we can start working may be as challenging as escalating a mountain. Precisely, the highest mountain in Costa Rica is called Chirripo, so we named this toolset after it to remember that even when a journey is really challenging, we can complete it successfully using the right tools.

The Chirripo toolset is a composer package that makes it possible to add a cool docker container setup to any existing PHP project. This docker container setup works like a lego set in which you can define what parts of it do you want and which are not going to be used. It is made of four main components:

- [chirripo/chirripo](https://github.com/chirripo/chirripo): this is where all the fun happens, it contains the docker compose setup where we can customize which containers we need and want to use. It also provides a set of commands that makes it easy to develop and control our project.
- [chirripo/chirripo-proxy](https://github.com/chirripo/chirripo-proxy): this is not a mandatory component, but if you want to access your local sites using domain names, you should definitely use this.
- [chirripo/chirripo-launcher](https://github.com/chirripo/chirripo-launcher): also, not mandatory, but it will allow you to use Chirripo commands just by typing "chirripo" in your console.
- Chirripo Docker images: we created some custom images for [PHP](https://github.com/chirripo/php) and [CLI](https://github.com/chirripo/cli) containers. 

Chirripo is brought to you by [Kevin Porras](https://twitter.com/kporras07) and me as an open source project. We encourage you to look at it, use it, share it and contribute to it if you like it. You can see some contribution guidelines [here](https://docs.chirripo.dev/contributing/) and all the information about what it is and how to use can be found in our [website](https://chirripo.dev/) and our [documentation](https://docs.chirripo.dev/) page.