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I am using Lando for local WordPress development.

But because it relies on Docker the performance isn't great out of the box. To solve that problem the Lando devs say we can exclude files and folders from Docker to speed things up.

So far I have excluded three folders in my .lando.yml file, like so:

name: my-blog
recipe: wordpress
config:
  webroot: .
excludes: 
  - wp-admin
  - wp-content
  - wp-includes

This has made the WordPress admin and front end considerablly faster on my local machine.

But then I tried to squeeze out every last bit of performance by excluding the entire root wordpress/ directory, like so:

name: my-blog
recipe: wordpress
config:
  webroot: .
excludes: 
  - .

When doing this I ran into issues where changes on the site (such as edits to pages etc) were not being saved.

With that in mind I have three closley related questions:

  1. Why I can exclude those three folders mentioned above but not the root directory?
  2. What are the potential draw backs of excluding even those three folders I mentioned above?
  3. What are the exact WordPress files and folders that are considered safe for exlcuding this way?
TinyTiger
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1 Answers1

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  1. Why I can exclude those three folders mentioned above but not the root directory?

It depends on what files change. Excluding a folder means only the copy inside of the container is used and you'll have to rebuild to pick up any new changes.

Think of it like this, without exclude you're creating something close to a symlink. This is where the slowness comes from, every time a file is touched in the container the filesystem has to reach outside of the container and get the file from your local filesystem. Adding an entry to exclude is basically making a copy of the file inside of the container that does not get updated.

  1. What are the potential draw backs of excluding even those three folders I mentioned above?

Any changes you make on your local machine in excluded folders will not be reflected in the container like you're used to happening.

  1. What are the exact WordPress files and folders that are considered safe for excluding this way?

This depends on what you're doing honestly and how you've installed WordPress. If you've installed it via a package manager, excluding those managed folders is typically very beneficial (ie, vendor/node_modules/etc). If you do this and make changes via your package manager, you'll have to rebuild the container or ssh into the container and rerun the package manager

But it really depends on what you're going to be changing. If you're working on a plugin or a theme then you'll need to ensure the plugin or theme folders is included, and so on.
For parts of the filesystem you aren't touching or aren't concerned with seeing, it is probably safe to exclude those. They will still work within the container, you just won't have easy access to inspect anything created/altered.

K.B.
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