lerd-deb

Open-source Herd-like local PHP development environment, packaged for Debian/Ubuntu and published to the ppa:lerd/lerd Launchpad PPA.

Lerd runs Nginx, PHP-FPM, and your services as rootless Podman containers: automatic .test domains with HTTPS, per-project PHP versions, one-click databases and services, a built-in web UI, TUI, CLI and MCP server. No Docker, no sudo, no system pollution. This repo makes it a first-class Ubuntu citizen: apt install lerd brings up the whole stack on its own, and every update after that arrives with your normal system updates.

Install

The PPA carries packages for every Ubuntu release in standard support and for the current development release (the SERIES list in scripts/common.sh). On one of those:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lerd/lerd
sudo apt update
sudo apt install lerd
lerd install

On any other release, add-apt-repository leaves behind a source entry that fails every later apt update, because the PPA has nothing published for that series. If that has already happened, remove it with sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:lerd/lerd. Either way, use the script installer instead:

curl -fsSL https://lerd.sh/install.sh | bash

Updates arrive through apt like any other package:

sudo apt upgrade

How it works

Launchpad PPAs build from signed source packages, not prebuilt binaries. lerd needs a very recent Go toolchain and a network-fetched Svelte UI, neither of which the network-isolated Launchpad build farm can provide. So this repo does not build lerd from source. Instead it repackages the binaries already published on each upstream release: the source tarball ships the prebuilt lerd (and lerd-tray on amd64), and debian/rules installs the one matching the architecture Launchpad is building for.

The package uses the 3.0 (native) source format so the prebuilt binaries can live in the source tarball without a separate orig tarball. Each upstream version is uploaded once per Ubuntu series with a ~series version suffix (for example 1.29.0~noble1).

Automation

.github/workflows/publish.yml polls the upstream repo daily. When a new release appears it builds signed source packages and dputs them to the PPA, then records the version in published-version. Manual runs are limited to repo admins.

.github/workflows/ci.yml builds a binary .deb on every push and asserts it installs /usr/bin/lerd.

Prerequisites

The publishing workflow needs an OpenPGP key that is registered on the Launchpad account that owns the PPA:

• GPG_PRIVATE_KEY secret: the ASCII-armored private key used to sign uploads.
• The matching public key added at launchpad.net/~<account>/+editpgpkeys, and its email confirmed on the account.

Enable the arm64 processor in the PPA settings if you want arm64 builds.

Manual publish

sudo apt install devscripts debhelper dput
# dry run, unsigned source build:
scripts/build-source.sh 1.29.0
# build a binary .deb and check it installs the binary:
scripts/build-binary.sh 1.29.0
# real signed upload:
GPG_KEY_ID=<your-key-id> scripts/publish.sh 1.29.0