How does the Craft CMS built-in web server works?

Question

I just found this while using ./craft help in the Craft CMS command line utilities:

- serve                                      Runs the PHP built-in web server.
    serve/index (default)                    Runs PHP built-in web server.

• How to use this built-in web server?
• How can I edit these web server settings?
• Can i use multiple of these web server at once?

At this time of writing, I didn't find any documentation about that.

I'm using the latest version of Craft CMS (Craft Pro 3.3.17) under Mac OS (10.14.6).

Answer 1

This just launches PHP's built in web server, documentation for it can be found here: https://www.php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.webserver.php

You can use php -s localhost:8000 instead

You can see available settings by running php -s

Yes you can run multiple versions on different ports

Hope this helps!