laravel/bootstrap/start.php

<?php

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Create The Application
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| The first thing we will do is create a new Laravel application instance
| which serves as the "glue" for all the components of Laravel, and is
| the IoC container for the system binding all of the various parts.
|
*/

$app = new Illuminate\Foundation\Application;

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Detect The Application Environment
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Laravel takes a dead simple approach to your application environments
| so you can just specify a machine name or HTTP host that matches a
| given environment, then we will automatically detect it for you.
|
*/

$env = $app->detectEnvironment(array(

	'local' => array('your-machine-name'),

));

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Bind Paths
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here we are binding the paths configured in paths.php to the app. You
| should not be changing these here. If you need to change these you
| may do so within the paths.php file and they will be bound here.
|
*/

$paths = require __DIR__.'/paths.php';

$app->instance('path', $appPath = $paths['app']);

$app->instance('path.base', $paths['base']);

$app->instance('path.public', $paths['public']);

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Load The Application
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here we will load the Illuminate application. We'll keep this is in a
| separate location so we can isolate the creation of an application
| from the actual running of the application with a given request.
|
*/

require $app->getBootstrapFile();

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Return The Application
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| This script returns the application instance. The instance is given to
| the calling script so we can separate the building of the instances
| from the actual running of the application and sending responses.
|
*/

return $app;