apache - Whats the point of running Laravel with the command 'php artisan serve'?

Question

I dont seem to understand why we need to run a Laravel app with php artisan serve vs just running it with Apache or nginx. I know that under development, we use artisan to fire up the site and after deployment to a server, you use the webserver to load up the site.

Whats the use of running the app in artisan in the first place?

Answer 1

The serve command is just a shortcut for the PHP Built-in Webserver, something PHP has out of the box, so the point of using it is to start testing your application as fast as you could, you just need to install PHP, Composer and your application is up (if you don't need anything else, of course). But if you already have Nginx installed, there is no point at all, just use it.

It's not wise to use the Builtin Webserver in production.