Acquia Dev Desktop
The Acquia Drupal stack installer
Acquia Dev Desktop is a Drupal-specific xAMP stack installer, or "DAMP stack". It is the fastest way to set up Acquia Drupal to run locally on Windows or a Mac.
In just a few clicks, you have a full Acquia Drupal website up-and-running on your computer. With a few clicks more, you can install more. You can use these sites to evaluate Acquia Drupal, add and test other Drupal components, workflows and functionality - and even get things wrong without worrying about ruining a live, production website.
What if you've already installed part of the xAMP stack? Acquia Dev Desktop installs separate copies of the xAMP stack onto your computer, both to ensure that you have the versions of the software required for Drupal, and to not affect the settings of the applications you've already installed on your computer.
Components
Acquia Dev Desktop's xAMP stack consists of the following components:
| Component | Description |
| Acquia Drupal | A packaged distribution of the open source Drupal social publishing system. |
| Apache HTTP Server™ | The world's most popular web server. |
| MySQL™ Database Server | The world's most popular database server. |
| PHP | The language that powers Drupal. (To view a full listing of the PHP extensions and variables after you install Acquia Dev Desktop on your computer, see the Config tab roll-up information at Control Panel settings.) |
| phpMyAdmin | A popular in-browser database management tool. |
| Acquia Dev Desktop Control Panel | The control panel shows the status of the Dev Desktop's Apache and MySQL servers, allows you to start and stop them, and gives you access to your local Acquia Drupal website, phpMyAdmin and the settings window of the control panel itself. |
| XMail Server (Windows only) | Allows your locally installed site to send e-mail directly. This is important for password reset, testing, and other functionality. (Mac OS X includes this built-in functionality.) |
Getting started with Acquia Dev Desktop
You can install Acquia Dev Desktop onto several different supported operating systems.
Use the procedures in this guide to install Acquia Dev Desktop onto your computer, or to upgrade your Dev Desktop installation.
Need technical support for Acquia Dev Desktop? See the Acquia Dev Desktop FAQ for details.
For additional information, browse the Knowledge Base articles in the Acquia Help Center.