In a post to his site Andreas Möller shares a tool that he uses to get an application up and running quickly, providing a makefile for lazy developers.

Whatever the size of the software project, I believe in, subscribe to, and promote Continuous Integration. Personally, I rely on Travis CI as an automated build system. Regardless of whether an automated build system can be set up and used for a project or not, I prefer to be able to run build steps locally. This prevents stress testing the automated build system and taking away resources from other developers. Also, it gives me more confidence before committing and pushing changes upstream.

[...] For a couple of years now I have been using make, after having been introduced to it when working on a project in 2014. While it has its limitations, it’s short and simple, and most of all, it get’s the job done.

He then talks about the repository he's created to get up and running quickly that creates a simple Makefile to define several make commands and shortcuts for some common tasks. The make it task is the most used, executing all of the other tasks to ensure that all tests pass, the code is well-structured and generates a coverage report to ensure as much of the code is covered by tests as it should be.

Fabien Potencier (creator of the Symfony framework) has a new post on his site continuing his look at Symfony 4. In this latest article he looks at some of the best practices to use in the next major release of the framework based on some of the architectural changes coming down the line.

Any major version of a project is an opportunity to revisit its best practices. Modernizing them. Adapting them to the project's new features. Symfony 4 is no exception.

He breaks it up into a few different sections offering tips around each, just to get you thinking about the path ahead with v4 releases:

• Standardization first (using more standard tools)
• Bundle-less Applications
• Environment Variables
• Unified Web Front Controller
• Makefile
• Assets Management

Each item includes a description of some of the changes coming and what behaviors you'll need to modify to make life smoother in the Symfony 4 transition.