How to Override Laravel Installer to Allow Custom .env Defaults and Run Extra Shell Commands

I can’t state how many times I have an idea for a side project. Start it, and scrap it. A lot of that is my ADHD, but one thing that I hate about Laravel’s installer and boilerplate is I ALWAYS have to edit the .env.

There’s a few things though that never change from project to project.

Here are my generally sensible defaults for most laravel projects:

Change App Name / Url

APP_NAME=Awesomeapp
APP_URL=http://awesomeapp.test

Mailhog for email testing.

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=mailhog 
MAIL_PORT=1025
MAIL_USERNAME=admin@awesomeapp.test
MAIL_PASSWORD=test1234 
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS=admin@awesomeapp.test 
MAIL_FROM_NAME=Awesomeapp

Setup redis for sessions/cache/queue.

CACHE_DRIVER=redis
QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis
SESSION_DRIVER=redis
SESSION_LIFETIME=120
REDIS_HOST=127.0.0.1
REDIS_PASSWORD=null
REDIS_PORT=6379

Running extra scripts.

I always run a script that creates a symlink from ~/sites/appname ~…