Ddev: Env variable $WEBSERVER_DOCROOT not available any more in v1.15-alpha6

[jonaseberle]

Describe the bug

Sorry, I can't say if it was ever intended to be used. I used it to get the project root (instead of hardcoding it as /var/www/html) inside the web container.

To Reproduce
Add a post-start hook in config.yaml:

hooks:
  post-start:
  - exec: env

The environment variable $WEBSERVER_DOCROOT was available until 1.14.2

Expected behavior
$WEBSERVER_DOCROOT contains the project root path inside the web container.

Version and configuration information (please complete the following information):

• Host computer OS and Version: Linux 4.15
• Docker version information (use docker version)

Client:
 Version:           19.03.6
 API version:       1.40
 Go version:        go1.12.17
 Git commit:        369ce74a3c
 Built:             Fri Feb 28 23:45:43 2020
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Experimental:      false

Server:
 Engine:
  Version:          19.03.6
  API version:      1.40 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version:       go1.12.17
  Git commit:       369ce74a3c
  Built:            Wed Feb 19 01:06:16 2020
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     false
 containerd:
  Version:          1.3.3-0ubuntu1~18.04.2
  GitCommit:        
 runc:
  Version:          spec: 1.0.1-dev
  GitCommit:        
 docker-init:
  Version:          0.18.0
  GitCommit:

• ddev version information: v1.15-alpha6

[rfay]

Yes, it was removed. It was used to preprocess the apache and nginx files inside the web container. But now they're preprocessed by ddev on the host, so the file in ~/.ddev/nginx_full doesn't need that any more.

How do you use it? (It was actually the docroot, not /var/www/html (which is sometimes the docroot)

And thanks for testing!

[jonaseberle]

I actually used it as project root. E.g. to get the directory ./data, I would use "$WEBSERVER_DOCROOT"/data.

In our TYPO3 projects we usually use this setup (config.yaml):

working_dir:
  web: /var/www/html/src
docroot: src/public

I used it in these scripts, too:
https://github.com/drud/ddev-contrib/blob/master/custom-commands/dump-and-deploy-db/web/dump-db
https://github.com/drud/ddev-contrib/blob/master/custom-commands/dump-and-deploy-db/web/deploy-db

I am fine if it's gone. I was not sure if project root would always be /var/www/html but that seems to be a given now.

[rfay]

The project root is always /var/www/html; I guess the fact that $WEBSERVER_DOCROOT was always /var/www/html (without the docroot) is that that change was made in an environment that didn't propagate to your usage, so it was always misleading that it was called "DOCROOT".

I think we're better off without this environment variable, but I'm open to convincing. Sorry to break your scripts.

I guess you're willing to lose this as well. I'll add a note to the release notes.

[jonaseberle]

No problem. It was undocumented so I am not to blame anyone if it's gone.

[rfay]

Closing then, happy to provide something in its place if it's useful.

[paulvandermeijs]

If you have scripts that still use $WEBSERVER_DOCROOT just put this at the top of the script to define it in case it isn't available:

: "${WEBSERVER_DOCROOT:=/var/www/html}"