Important
End of Support notice! Acquia has stopped support for Dev Desktop on June 30, 2021. Acquia recommends that you transition to Acquia Cloud IDE for a managed development environment on Cloud Platform. For more information, see Migrating from Dev Desktop to Cloud IDE.
Acquia also provides limited integration with open source alternatives to Cloud IDE for local development. For more information, see Local development solutions.
Communication with your Acquia Cloud server is protected with a private/public key pair. To host an Acquia Dev Desktop website on Acquia Cloud, you must:
Generate an SSH private/public key pair (if you don’t already have one). You can use the Acquia Dev Desktop Preferences page to generate your keys.
Ensure that you have the correct permissions for your Acquia Cloud website.
Registering your public key with Acquia Cloud
You can add a public key to your Acquia account on the Profile > Credentials page. For more information, see Adding a public key to an Acquia profile and Getting started with SSH.
Note
Installing a new SSH key that is not yet provisioned in your Cloud account will cause Acquia Dev Desktop to display the following error message: SSH key not yet paired with Acquia Cloud. Allow a few minutes for provisioning to occur.
Acquia Cloud permissions
To sync a website between Acquia Dev Desktop and Acquia Cloud, you must have the correct permissions. Site group administrators, and users with the default role Team Lead, have the necessary permissions. A role needs the following permissions to support using Acquia Dev Desktop with an Acquia Cloud website:
Access the Cloud API
Add SSH key to the Git repository
Add SSH key to non-Production environments
Add SSH key to the Production environment
Pull and deploy code, files, or databases to non-Production environments
You may want to create a custom role that includes these permissions, or modify the Senior Developer role so that it includes these permissions. Learn more about Acquia teams, roles, and permissions.
Entering your private key in Acquia Dev Desktop
When you host a local Acquia Dev Desktop website on Acquia Cloud or create a local clone of an Acquia Cloud website for the first time, Acquia Dev Desktop prompts you for the private key that corresponds to the public key registered on Acquia Cloud. Click Browse, and select the location of your private key. Then click OK.
Finding your private key
By default, the location of your private key should be ~/.ssh/id_dsa
or ~/.ssh/id_rsa. If you can’t either view or edit your private key
file using a text editor, use a command like the following to copy the
contents of the key file directly to the clipboard:
pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_dsa
Changing your private key location
You can view and modify your private key location at any time in Acquia Dev Desktop by completing the following steps:
Select an Acquia Cloud website.
In the right panel, click Settings.
Click Browse, and then select the new location of your private key.
Click OK.