The SitePoint PHP blog has posted a new tutorial for those developers out there that like the idea of the Laravel Mix functionality for defining Webpack builds but aren't using the rest of the framework for their application.

If you, like me, just want to get up and running on a project as quickly as possible, you probably don’t want to spend time configuring build tools like Webpack. Laravel Mix solves this problem, and makes asset compiling incredibly easy, but what if you want to use it on a non-Laravel project? This article shows you how to accomplish that.

[...] Laravel Mix, formerly Elixir, could be defined as an API wrapper for Webpack. It has a fluent syntax and is generally easy to use. Setting up versioning, hot reloading, and asset building/compiling is a breeze and requires only a single configuration file and a few lines of code.

The post starts off with the requirements you'll need to create the build - besides the Mix code, naturally (NPM and Node). He includes the commands to get the required packages installed and how to create the initial Webpack "mix" file. They then add a few packages to be installed, create assets to be compiled and run the tool to perform the actual build. There's also a section about "cache busting" and, finally, setting up a local index file to test out the result. The tutorial ends with a few other helpful commands you might want to use during your development.

On the DotDev.co blog there's a recent tutorial posted from Eric Barnes showing you how to combine Laravel Mix and WordPress to make it easier to manage webpack dependencies.

Laravel Mix is a fluent wrapper around the webpack module bundler, and it provides common tools that help you compile CSS and JavaScript. It’s easy to work with, and although it comes baked into the Laravel framework, you can use it anywhere.

This site is using WordPress, and when I created the theme I used Mix to handle the asset compiling; it was simple to setup. Here is a quick overview of how I did it in four steps. Please note, you will need to have a recent version of Node and npm installed on your machine before continuing.

He then walks you through a four step process to set up the integration between the two:

• Step 1. Create the package.json File
• Step 2. Webpack Mix
• Step 3. Create Your style.scss File
• Step 4. Create an app.js

He ends the post with some helpful commands you can use while you're in the development process including compiling for both dev and production environments. More information about Mix can be found in the Laravel documentation.

Matt Stauffer has posted the latest in his "What's new in Laravel 5.4' series with this new post covering Laravel Mix. Mix is a reworking of the Laravel Elixir package in previous framework releases but has changed a few things up in the process.

Laravel Mix. The same and yet entirely different from Laravel Elixir.

If you're not familiar with Laravel Elixir, it's a wrapper around Gulp that makes it really simple to handle common build steps—CSS pre-processing like Sass and Less, JavaScript processing like Browserify and Webpack, and more.

In Laravel 5.4, Elixir has been replaced by a new project called Mix. The tools have the same end goals, but go about it in very different ways.

He starts with a look at what's new about Mix and how it differs from previous version of Elixir. This includes changes in the structure of the configuration file, a different files/folders structure, helpers and quite a few other changes. Matt gets into detail on each item, providing code examples for the changes and a brief summary of how it's different for those that might have used Elixir before. Check out the full post for the full details.

On Developer.com today there's a new tutorial about Quercus - the Java-based implementation of PHP - and how to get it up and running in your environment.

Imagine the possibilities when a PHP developer can continue using the language's templating capabilities while leveraging Hibernate's object-relational features. Thanks to an open source project named Quercus, PHP and Java developers alike can mix and match the respective capabilities of both languages. [...] This approach (part of the movement that software architect Neal Ford famously defined as "polyglot programming") opens up a whole new world of opportunities for developers seeking to squeeze every last ounce of performance and capability from their application platforms.

They help you get it installed and show you how to execute a PHP script from inside. There's also a bit about integrating Java libraries into your code and the integration of a type of tool PHP doesn't come native with, something like iTextPDF.

Wez Furlong has posted a request for some questions to help things along for an upcoming panel discussion he's going to be on at this year's MIX.

As I mentioned previously, I'll be at MIX this year on a panel discussing ASP and PHP interoperability, along with Jesse Liberty, Bill Staples, Joe Stagner and Brian Goldfarb.

I've been told that MIX has sold out and that there is a lot of interest in our slot, so I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about, but I'm looking for questions to break the ice and get things rolling.

If you know a little bit about the topic and would like to help out with questions of your own, send them along to Wez via email - wez@php.net.

Wez Furlong has posted a request for some questions to help things along for an upcoming panel discussion he's going to be on at this year's MIX.

As I mentioned previously, I'll be at MIX this year on a panel discussing ASP and PHP interoperability, along with Jesse Liberty, Bill Staples, Joe Stagner and Brian Goldfarb.

I've been told that MIX has sold out and that there is a lot of interest in our slot, so I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about, but I'm looking for questions to break the ice and get things rolling.

If you know a little bit about the topic and would like to help out with questions of your own, send them along to Wez via email - wez@php.net.