Drush is the command line shell and Unix scripting interface for Drupal. The most common way to install Drush is to install it on a per-project basis using Composer. We'll walk through the steps to do that, as well as how to set up the Drush Launcher tool (to make it possible to execute Drush commands without having to specify a full path to the executable).
In this tutorial we'll:
- Install Drush
- Verify it worked
By the end of this tutorial you'll have Drush installed.
Goal
Install Drush and verify it's working.
Prerequisites
Install Drush using Composer
This assumes that your Drupal codebase is managed using Composer. The current recommendation is to install Drush on a per-project basis. This allows for having different versions of Drush installed for different projects. This is a best practice because different versions of Drush are compatible with a particular set of Drupal versions.
For older versions of Drupal and to learn which version of Drush is compatibile with your Drupal version, see the Drush documentation on installing and upgrading Drush.
Run composer require
In most cases it's best to install Drush as a development dependency. From the root directory of your project run the following command:
composer require --dev drush/drush
Once that's completed run the command ./vendor/bin/drush --version to verify it worked.
./vendor/bin/drush --version
# > Drush Commandline Tool 13.3.1.0
Using the Drush command
The standard way to invoke Drush is by using the full path to the executable. For example, running ./vendor/bin/drush <command> from the root directory of your Drupal project. How exactly you call the drush command will depend on your local environment and its specific configuration.
If you're using DDEV, you can invoke Drush from outside the container with ddev drush <command>, or inside the web container (after running ddev ssh) with a plain drush <command>.
In other local environments, you may need to configure your $PATH environment variable to include ./vendor/bin, to avoid having to type the full path every time.
The important thing to be aware of is that if you copy/paste Drush commands, you might need to adjust the path to the Drush executable for your specific environment.
Recap
In this tutorial we learned how to use Composer to install Drush.
Further your understanding
- Run the
drushcommand with no arguments to see a list of available Drush commands.
Additional resources
- Drush documentation (drush.org)