Development Environment Setup

1. Install mdk the moodle development kit.

   # you'll need python and pip installed. You'll also need either mysql or postrges extensions for php too.
   sudo pip install moodle-mdk
   # tell mdk where to put stuff locally by one time configuration
   mdk init

2. Use mdk to create as many local instances as you need.

   This will download from git the stable 2.8 version of moodle, install it, run the appropriate moodle installation stuff, create databases etc. it will also put the moodle into dev mode (i.e. lots of notice level messages disaplayed to browser, and run a script to create some test users.

   mdk create -i -v 28 -r dev users

3. Configure apache to point to the correct locations using a virtual host like this. Clearly you'll need to update the paths to match your system.

   NameVirtualHost *:80
   <VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerName moodle.local
       DocumentRoot /home/user/www/
       <Directory "/home/user/www">
           Options Indexes  FollowSymLinks
           AllowOverride All
           Require all granted
       </Directory>
       AliasMatch ^/m(.*) /home/user/www/$1 
   </VirtualHost>