How to pull a BOA-hosted Drupal site into your local DDEV project

# What this does

Omega8.cc provides a small DDEV add-on (ddev-boa) that automates pulling a BOA-hosted Drupal site into the DDEV project that already holds your code. It reads what the remote site reports about itself, configures your local DDEV project to match PHP and Drupal versions and docroot, then fetches the database and public uploads over the same limited shell/SFTP account you already use. No server-side features need enabling and nothing about the pull is stored in the host control plane.

# The quick recipe (commands you'll run)

1. 1From your DDEV project: ddev add-on get omega8cc/ddev-boa
2. 2Configure provider file with your shell account and server.

1. 1ddev auth ssh — lets DDEV use the SSH key you already use (run once per session).
2. 2ddev boa-config — queries the site for PHP version, Drupal version, docroot and writes a local config you can review.

# How the add-on handles files and safety

# Safety refusals and checks

• If a site alias does not resolve, the add-on stops rather than falling back to the local code folder. This prevents accidentally rsyncing live credentials into your project.

# Differences to expect vs production

• What the add-on reads and copies is what the site reports about itself. Per-site control panel settings, panel UI, and BOA's per-site compiled options are not exported.

# The alternate door: a private BOA VM

If you need the full stack instead of a site copy, build BOA on a private VM. Install BOA locally on a VM without public IP or DNS, put your root key on it, run the installer with the local option, and you get the Nginx and PHP per-site builds, Percona, Ægir panel and a tenant answering only on the private hostname. Use that VM to run risky operations you would never run on production.

# Compatibility notes

# Bottom line

If you host on BOA and use DDEV, the ddev-boa add-on cuts the manual dump/rsync/edit cycle to a few commands, uses existing SSH access, pulls only what you should have locally, and stops instead of silently copying risky secrets. For full-stack experiments, run BOA on a private VM instead.