Chrome 63 vs. dev domains

With the recent update to version 63 for Chrome they introduced a feature, that redirects all *.dev  calls from HTTP to HTTPS.

If you are using *.dev  domains to access your development machine, this behaviour is probably not what you want for all your local urls.

Configuring dnsmasq

At netz98 we are using dnsmasq to redirect all *.dev  calls to our localhost.

dnsmasq has a setting where you can easily change this to another domain like *.localhost .

First of locate the config file for dnsmasq. If you have installed it using brew you will probably find it under /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf .

Open the file in an editor of your choice and look for the following line:

address=/dev/127.0.0.1

And change it to:

address=/localhost/127.0.0.1

If you cannot find a line setting the address like shown above, just add a new line with the setting.

To restart dnsmasq you can use

brew services restart dnsmasq

Configuring apache / nginx

Depending on your choice of setup you might be using an nginx or apache setup.

You most likely have some virtual-hosts or server settings that might need to be adjusted to the new domain.

This could look something like this for nginx.

server {
  listen 80;

  server_name shop.dev;

  // ....
}

Locate the server_name setting and any other occurences of your *.dev  domain and change it to .localhost

Do not forget to change your Magento1 or Magento2 Urls in the core_config_data table.

MacOS Nameserver

For Firefox and Safari and a working ping foo.bar.localhost , you also have to add a setting for that.

Create the file /etc/resolver/localhost  with the following content:

nameserver 127.0.0.1

After doing so, you need to restart the DNS Resolver and flush caches.
I am on the latest MacOS 10.13 so I had to run the following command:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder; sudo killall mDNSResponderHelper; sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

If you are running a different MacOS version, you can find a great blog post over at Dreamhost where they list the commands for each MacOS version: https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/214981288-Flushing-your-DNS-cache-in-Mac-OS-X-and-Linux

UPDATE:
You might have to do a reboot of your machine so that the resolver works.

UPDATE 2:
Firefox and Safari require the above mentioned resolver to work.

If you got anything to add or there even is a better solution feel free to leave a comment below.