Clone a Drupal 8 Site into Acquia DevDesktop

Here's an easy method to clone an existing Drupal 8 site into your local environment using Acquia Dev Desktop. All you need is the site codebase and a database dump..

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  1. Compress and save the site files. (Everything from the folder where the docroot resides.)
  2. Export your database and unzip.
  3. Untar/unzip the files into your desired directory.
  4. In devDesktop, click the bottom + sign and select "Import Local Site".
  5. In Local codebase folder, choose your directory.
  6. In the database field, select Start with a MySQL database dump file.

  7. Select your unzipped database dump. If you used phpMyAdmin for the db export, you may encounter an error that says: 

    You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '`value` longblob NOT NULL COMMENT 'The value.', PRIMARY KEY (`collection`,`nam' at line 3

This has a documented fix in this comment: https://www.drupal.org/node/2496331#comment-10029863

  1. Save options and click the link to visit your newly cloned site.