DDEV Blog: DDEV 2025 Year in Review

Guest contributions to the blog are always welcome and key contributors added significant posts this year:

Board of Directors Established: In December 2025, we formally established a Board of Directors for the DDEV Foundation, enhancing governance and setting the stage for long-term sustainability. We’re super proud of this as it’s something we’ve been working toward for years. Read all about it.
Advisory Group Continues: Our Advisory Group meetings continued throughout the year, providing valuable input and oversight. It will continue just about the same even though we now have a formal Board.
“Almost Everybody Loves DDEV”: The Ironstar Developer Survey 2025 confirmed what we suspected – DDEV has strong community support and satisfaction.

Alan Doucette – dragonwize – 1 contribution

addons.ddev.com now shows 147 community-contributed add-ons (176 in total).
Several key features were suggested, initiated, and developed by community members. SO MANY of these are listed below.
Online Training: We restarted online contributor and user training
Offline Training: Randy conducted many Birds-of-a-Feature sessions at DrupalCons, spoke at Florida Drupalcamp, attended, spoke, and trained at TYPO3Camp RheinRuhr, etc.

Massively improved reporting, communication, and management of sponsorship information
Public sponsorship data feed via sponsorship-data repository
Banners on DDEV web properties and The Drop Times show current funding status
Daily ddev start notifications keep users informed about sponsorship status

Add-on Ecosystem

The Add-on Registry launched in January 2025, now displays 176 add-ons, 29 of which are officially maintained by the DDEV team.
PHP-based add-ons: Add-ons can now be written in PHP, as the ddev-upsun add-on shows. The PHP language is far more powerful for complex tasks than shell scripts.
ddev add-on get now downloads add-on dependencies automatically
x-ddev extension allows add-ons to add important information to ddev describe output
Add-on monitoring continues for both official and community add-ons. We monitor the nightly tests of official add-ons, and periodically check in with all the community add-ons, asking people to re-enable or fix tests.
New official add-ons: FrankenPHP (June), Redis Insight (July), Upsun (August), NVM Standalone (November)
By year’s end: 29 official add-ons and 176+ total add-ons.
Stas continued to document and promote best practices with add-ons, including improved testing and upgrading strategies.

Container and Infrastructure

Parallel Docker image pulls for faster project starts
Docker Compose profiles: Start projects with specific profiles using ddev start --profiles=list,of,profiles
Refactored Docker API code: no calls to docker binary (switched to github.com/docker/cli) and no fragile YAML map structures (switched to github.com/compose-spec/compose-go/v2)

James Sansbury – q0rban – 1 contribution

Podman support: Podman rootless/rootful environments
Docker rootless functionality added for Linux environments
Base web server image updated to Debian 13 Trixie

Developer Experience

XHGui integration funded by TYPO3 Association, read more
ddev-upsun add-on provides new integration with Upsun (formerly Platform.sh) fixed and flex projects.
New handling of privilege elevation using the ddev-hostname binary, improving security, read more
--user/-u flag for ddev exec and ddev ssh
ddev describe now works on stopped projects
ddev utility download-images --all forces pulling all images in use
Shell completion added and expanded thanks to community contributions
ddev npx command support
Improved cleanup for ddev delete and ddev delete images
Automatic HTTP/S communication between DDEV projects
Enhanced and simpler Pantheon support

James Sansbury – q0rban – 1 contribution

Improved ddev share: More configurable, customizable, with pre-share hooks and DDEV_SHARE_URL environment variable
ddev utility mutagen-diagnose: Automatic study of Mutagen problems or misconfiguration
ddev utility xdebug-diagnose: Automatic study of possible Xdebug configuration problems

Language and Database Updates

PHP 8.5 support added with a limited set of extensions (in v1.24.10)
MariaDB 11.8 support added
PostgreSQL 18 support added
Node.js as primary web server support

James Sansbury – q0rban – 1 contribution

PHP 8.4 is the default for new projects (previously PHP 8.3)
PHP 8.5 support with all extensions
Node.js 24 as default for new projects (previously Node.js 22)
MariaDB 11.8 as default for new projects (previously MariaDB 10.11)

Windows Improvements

New Windows GUI Installer handling Traditional Windows, WSL2/Docker CE, and Docker/Rancher Desktop
ARM64 Windows installer support

Downloads page with improved installer access
Theme switch button for light/dark mode
Copy button for code blocks thanks to Bernardo Martinez
Giscus commenting system for community discussions on blog posts
AI integration documentation
Multiple blog posts published covering technical guides, platform-specific instructions, and organizational updates
Monthly newsletters tracking progress sign up!

The new Quickstart tests have proved to be extremely valuable, providing early warning when upstream projects change. They also are a completely new perspective into problems with DDEV. Kudos to @rpkoller for taking those on and maintaining them!
AkibaAT reorganized our Docker image builds so that multi-architecture builds that used to take an hour now take 10 minutes or less.
Continuous improvements to AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md to improve our efficiency in using AI.

ayalon – ayalon

Substantial features enabled by AI: Several features that seemed too daunting to start became achievable with AI assistance
Increased code volume: More code, including extensive tests (though test quality varies)
Tools used: Claude Code, GitHub Copilot
Training: Our use of Claude Code was significantly improved by taking a Coursera Course.

Market conditions are affecting agency and hosting company funding, and we go into 2026 with limited funding
We applied to participate in the Google Summer of Code and the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund but were not accepted in either.
Although the TYPO3 Association funded one feature submission (XHGui) later submissions were not accepted, and the nature of their program now seems to exclude DDEV features.
Key upstream groups like the TYPO3 Association and Drupal Association still are not figuring out how to fund DDEV.
bitnami/mysql issue: Using bitnami/mysql for MySQL 8.0 and 8.4 backfired with Bitnami ceasing its traditional support of important Docker images. This raises questions about dependency management when upstream projects change direction.
We continue to struggle with funding for DDEV and went backward this year instead of forward.
GitHub killed off the best strategy we had for keeping add-on tests running, which means that nightly tests must be manually enabled by their maintainers when they are discontinued automatically.
We’re so interested in solving user problems that it’s possible we’re too aggressive in Discord and maybe the issue queue in pursuing them. I’m thinking about whether this is an issue with users and will appreciate comment.

Hervé Donner – vever001 – 1 contribution

Continue outstanding user support Done.
Begin formal governance for the DDEV Foundation. Done.
Improve our Marketing CTA and information: Significant progress, with much better communication.
Continue to develop contributors and maintainers: Great year, as shown below.
XHGui support: Done
addons.ddev.com: Done
Feature: Implement mDNS as an alternate name resolution technique. Not funded, not implemented, de-prioritized.
Allow Add-ons to include other add-ons: Done
Go-based Upsun Add-on like ddev-platformsh: Done, but with PHP instead of Go.
Rewrite ddev-platformsh Add-on in Go: Done, but in PHP. ddev-upsun now supports the older Platform.sh “fixed” projects.
Develop a replacement for “Gitpod Classic”: Gitpod was removed from codebase, and GitHub Codespaces support was improved, but a full replacement remains a goal for 2026.
Improve self-diagnose capability: Done. Massive improvement with ddev utility diagnose, ddev utility mutagen-diagnose, ddev utility xdebug-diagnose.
DDEV’s Message-of-the-day and ddev.com should show current funding status and need: Done
DDEV Windows/WSL2 packaging and installation: Done
Change ddev share to a more configurable custom-command-based option: Done (in v1.25.0)
Rework configuration system using Viper. Not done and de-prioritized.

579 commits to the main repository
100+ pull requests merged
Releases v1.24.0 through v1.24.10 with v1.25.0 coming in early 2026
93 repositories in the DDEV ecosystem
3,400+ GitHub stars on the core project
29 official add-ons
176+ total add-ons

Garvin Hicking – garvinhicking

By Contributor

nmangold – nmangold – 1 contribution
Pedro Antonio Fructuoso Merino – pfructuoso – 1 contribution

test: add a no-interaction flag to the install command in ibexa bats file (#7479)
test: adding quickstarts for typo3 v13 and v12 plus bats tests (#7302)
feat: add success message for xhgui on and off, fixes #7202 (#7205)
test: make the drupal cms bats test a bit more robust and trustworthy (#7203)
test: fix for magento2 quickstart and bats test, fixes #7191 (#7192)
test: adjust openmage bats test assertions to the now available demo content (#7126)
test: bats test for Statamic Composer quickstart (#7116)
test: craftcms bats test (#7107)
test: adding silverstripe quickstart bats test (#7112)
test: symfony bats tests (#7102)
(and 26 more)

Shelane French – shelane – 2 contributions

build(image): use native arm builder for building Docker images, fixes #7539 (#7553)
feat: add ddev add-on search subcommand, fixes #7491 (#7554)
fix: add missing ephemeral port handling to xhgui service, fixes #7557 (#7560)
fix: replace broken http and https port lookup, fixes #7246 (#7259)
feat: add new envs DDEV_PRIMARY_URL_PORT, DDEV_PRIMARY_URL_WITHOUT_PORT and DDEV_SCHEME, fixes #7214 (#7218)
fix: Use fast checkpoint during PostgreSQL backup, fixes #7098 (#7219)
fix: disable Xdebug trigger for Xdebug and xhprof status checks, fixes #6191, fixes php-perfect/ddev-intellij-plugin#414 (#7216)

Bill Seremetis – bserem

docs: trailing whitespace on template (#7321)
refactor: improve ddev add-on get output, add warning exit code annotation (#7263)
fix: add BASE_IMAGE arg before everything else, for #7071 (#7258)
feat: support prepend.Dockerfile* files for multi-stage builds (#7071)
feat: show config..yml on ddev start (#7089)
fix: the #ddev-description stanza in add-on install actions not showing if it’s the first line (#7022)

Daniel Huf – dhuf – 1 contribution

fix(cakephp): do not override APP_DEFAULT_LOCALE (#7653)
docs: update ngrok link (#7359)
feat: Add live link to Discord (#7042)
refactor: remove outdated move-issue config , fixes #6899 (#6906)

Ajith Thampi Joseph – atj4me

docs: fix a little custom command annotations code example (#7711)
docs: Add missing sequelace command link to database-management.md (#7184)
docs: Fix niggling code sample inconsistency in troubleshooting.md (#6984)

O’Briat – obriat – 1 contribution

feat: backdrop add bee to quickstart (#7053)
docs: add Backdrop-specific config considerations. (#7037)
docs: change code refs to include info about Backdrop config storage options, fixes #7013 (#7014)

Peter Bowyer – pbowyer – 2 contributions

feat: support using zstd for snapshots, fix postgres:9 snapshot, fixes #7844, fixes #3583 (#7845)
build: fix getopt detection on macOS (#7846)

The DDEV open-source community continues excellent engagement on several fronts.

fix(heidisql): add default --databases=db to postgres, for #7830 (#7847)
feat(heidisql): allow postgres connections, fixes #7675 (#7677)

nickchomey – nickchomey – 1 contribution

feat(db): remove the hardcoded —server-id=0 parameter from MySQL startup, fixes #6768 (#7608)
fix(laravel): don’t edit database config in .env when there’s no database (#7584)

There are so many unofficial add-ons being maintained by so many people, but here are the folks that maintained official repositories:

docs: clarify instructions for using PhpStorm inside WSL2 (#7333)
docs: add MySQL 8.4 to supported databases (#6971)

Raphael Portmann – raphaelportmann – 2 contributions

feat: add DDEV_APPROOT variable to web container and updates documentation, fixes #7198 (#7199)
refactor: remove solrtail from installed example commands, fixes #7139 (#7140)

Travis Carden – TravisCarden – 3 contributions

fix: XHGui launch command support custom ports, fixes #7181 (#7182)
docs: Add the xhgui container to the building and contributing page. Add more description to the xhprof profiling page. (#7168)

I know this is “Too Much Information” but here is a simple and inadequate list of the amazing contributions directly to the main project by contributors other than Randy and Stas. It inspires me so much to see this consolidated list.

test: Add OpenMage composer quickstart and tests (#7133)
test: add OpenMage/Magento 1 quickstart test and split it from Magento 2, for #7094 (#7091)

Bang Dinh – bangdinhnfq – 1 contribution

docs: add Cloudflare warp networking instructions (#7975)

Ayu Adiati – adiati98 – 1 contribution

fix(router): ensure Traefik monitor port is always bound to localhost (#7942)

Upcoming v1.25.0:

fix(diagnose): Remove the hardcoded IP “127.0.0.1” from the DNS check, since it may be incorrect, fixes #7871 (#7872)

Adam – phenaproxima – 1 contribution

fix(commands): make HostWorkingDir respect WebWorkingDir (#7907)

Tim Kelty – timkelty – 1 contribution

fix: db port should be integer in generated TYPO3 AdditionalConfiguration.php, fixes #7892 (#7893)

Upcoming v1.25.0:

docs: clarify instructions for disabling Mutagen on a single project (#7861)

Ralf Koller – rpkoller – 36 contributions

docs: remove community examples link in documentation (#7834)

2025 saw significant AI integration in our development workflow:

docs: add missing dot in .ddev/.env.* (#7828)

Garvin Hicking – garvinhicking – 1 contribution

docs: add crosslink for shortened DDEV env variables to full list, fixes #7781 (#7782)

Rob Loach – RobLoach – 1 contribution

feat: use composer_root in cakephp, craftcms, laravel, magento2, shopware6, symfony for app type detection (#7558)

Claude Code and GitHub Copilot were used as assistants in gathering lists and material, and in reviewing this article.

chore(provider): remove trailing whitespace in YAML files (#7770)

Mrtn Schndlr – barbieswimcrew – 1 contribution

docs: explicitly mention setting system managed nvm version, for #6013 (#7733)

Bill Seremetis – bserem – 1 contribution

docs(faq): remove traefik config when changing project’s name, for #7638 (#7639)

August Miller – AugustMiller – 1 contribution

feat: add ddev npx command (#7599)

Jeremy Gonyea – jgonyea – 1 contribution

docs: clarify comments in the Drupal 10 and 11 quickstarts, fixes #7619 (#7620)

Benny Poensgen – vanWittlaer – 1 contribution

docs: remove Prerequisite section (#7621)

Popus Razvan Adrian – punkrock34 – 1 contribution

docs: fix typo in documentation (#7618)

As an open-source project we truly value the amazing contributions of the community. There are so many ways these contributions happen, including support requests and issues (we learn so much from those!) but also direct contributions.

docs: Fix blog link in main nav (#7566)

Andrew Berry – deviantintegral – 2 contributions

feat: add ddev version to ddev describe command, fixes #7398 (#7541)

Eduardo Rocha – hockdudu – 1 contribution

fix(pantheon): update Pantheon database pull to get fresh DB and file push to be CMS-agnostic, fixes #5215, fixes #4760 (#7486)

JshGrn – JshGrn – 1 contribution

feat: add Linux support for heidisql command (#7399)

Ariel Barreiro – hanoii – 6 contributions

refactor: add SVG to rewrite rule for TYPO3 (#7482)

Nick Hope – Nick-Hope – 1 contribution

docs(wsl): add wsl --update command for Windows (#7476)

tyler36 – tyler36 – 4 contributions

fix: temporarily allow write to /etc/mysql/conf.d/* for db container restart, fixes #7457 (#7458)

Loz Calver – lozcalver – 1 contribution

docs: How to use Xdebug with Composer for plugin development (#7423)

Upcoming v1.25.0:

feat: return real exit code from ddev exec and add quiet flag to it, fixes #3518 (#7385)

Dezső BICZÓ – mxr576 – 1 contribution

docs: add Terminus downgrade tips, fixes #7352 (#7353)

cyppe – cyppe – 2 contributions

build: upgrade mapstructure to v2 (#7396)

Damilola Emmanuel Olowookere – damms005 – 1 contribution

test: use main for setup-homebrew action instead of master (#7395)

E – ara303 – 1 contribution

docs: improve xhgui documentation, fixes #7376 (#7377)

2025 has been a year of significant growth and accomplishment for DDEV. With 579 commits to the main repository and releases from v1.24.0 through v1.24.10, we’ve made substantial progress on features, infrastructure, and community building. Here’s a look back at what we all achieved together.

docs: align Craft CMS quickstart with official documentation (#7323)

Erik Peterson – eporama – 1 contribution

feat: prune orphaned Node.js versions after install, fixes #7325 (#7326)

And thanks to all of you who use DDEV, report issues, answer questions in Discord and other venues, and spread the word. Your support makes this project possible.

docs: update Craft CMS quickstart, for #7236 (#7274)

lguigo22 – lguigo22 – 1 contribution

fix: Add path to docroot in wp parameters when not set, fixes #7241 (#7242)

Andrew Gearhart – AndrewGearhart – 1 contribution

docs: Update Shopware quickstart with “shopware/production” instead of “shopware/production:^v6.5” (#7253)

Laryn – laryn – 3 contributions

docs: wrap quotes around commands that use the caret symbol (#7237)

Sven Reichel – sreichel – 2 contributions

docs: fix minor typo in the Grav quickstart (#7197)

michaellenahan – michaellenahan – 1 contribution

build: stop installing chocolatey, fixes #6636, fixes #6344 (#7049)

Rui Chen – chenrui333 – 1 contribution

fix: nginx.conf should let index.php handle 404 errors for media files (#7050)

Justin Vogt – JUVOJustin – 1 contribution

fix: add timeout for netutil::IsPortActive check for WSL2 with “mirrored networking mode” as opposed to default “NAT mode”, fixes #6245 (#7166)

Stay tuned for our 2026 plans post where we’ll outline what’s next for DDEV. As always, we welcome your input through all our support venues.

fix: use charset=utf8mb4 in DATABASE_URL for Symfony environment variables, fixes #7068 (#7076)

crowjake – crowjake – 1 contribution

docs: Add docs about configuring browser for HTTPS certificates (#7075)

Markus Sommer – BreathCodeFlow – 1 contribution

docs: Update quickstart.md to remove Drupal CMS ZIP file instructions (#7119)

Alexey Murz Korepov – MurzNN – 1 contribution

docs: update Windows installation docs to use ‘Docker Engine’ terminology (#7092)

Danny Pfeiffer – danny2p – 1 contribution

docs: add DevDb tip to database management documentation (#7084)

Andreas Hager – andreashager – 1 contribution

docs: add WordPress special handling info about wp-cli.yml (#7080)

Peter Philipp – das-peter – 1 contribution

refactor: improve Docker version checks, set minimum supported Docker API to 1.44, fixes #6916 (#6946)

gitressa – gitressa – 1 contribution

feat: change php-fpm setting ‘decorate_workers_output’ to ‘no’ (#6964)

Pierre Paul Lefebvre – PierrePaul – 2 contributions

feat: switch apache mpm_prefork to mpm_event, fixes #6966 (#6967)

Marvin Hinz – marvinhinz – 1 contribution

docs: Add ProcessWire to the Quickstart List (#6879)

Brooke Mahoney – brookemahoney – 1 contribution

fix: update Drupal 7 settings.ddev.php and settings.php to match Drupal 7.103 (#6913)

Christopher Kaster – atomicptr – 1 contribution

fix: In acquia.yaml, specify default site source for ddev pull acquia. (#6874)

Summary by Count

Blog Guest Contributors

Jeremy Gonyea – jgonyea
Akiba – AkibaAT – 7 contributions

Yan Loetzer – yanniboi – 1 contribution

Moshe Weitzman – weitzman – 1 contribution

RubenColpaert – RubenColpaert – 1 contribution

grummbeer – grummbeer – 1 contribution

Tomas Norre Mikkelsen – tomasnorre – 1 contribution

Amazing Official Add-on Maintainers

Colan Schwartz – colans – 1 contribution

@tyler36 – ddev-browsersync, ddev-cron, ddev-cypress, ddev-qr, plus contributions to 20+ other add-ons
@weitzman (Moshe Weitzman) – ddev-drupal-contrib, ddev-selenium-standalone-chrome
@cmuench (Christian Münch) – ddev-opensearch
@julienloizelet (Julien Loizelet) – ddev-mongo, ddev-redis-insight
@mkalkbrenner – ddev-solr
@robertoperuzzo – ddev-sqlsrv
@b13 (TYPO3 agency) – ddev-typo3-solr, ddev-rabbitmq
@jedubois – ddev-varnish
@hussainweb – ddev-redis
@seebeen – ddev-ioncube, ddev-minio
@bserem (Bill Seremetis) – ddev-adminer
@AkibaAT – ddev-intellij-plugin
@biati-digital – vscode-ddev-manager