Bear Installation

There are 2 ways we recommend to install the Bear installation profile.

drush make build-bear.make /web/path/bear
cd /web/path/bear
drush site-install bear --yes --sites-subdir=default --db-url=PUT_YOUR_DB_SPEC_HERE --db-su=DBUSER --db-su-pw=DBPASSWORD --account-name=admin --account-pass=secretsecret

To view your site in a web browser:

cd sites/default
drush runserver /
Download bear from Drupal.org. This is a full Drupal install with the Bear profile added.
Unpack the archive file so that it becomes your www root folder.
Install bear profile from the Drupal install page instead of Minimal or Standard profiles.

Bear Installation Notes:

It is recommended that if building bear using Drush from Drupal.org directly that the the libraries, modules, and themes directories be moved to /sites/all/ path location. The Drupal.org packaging script puts these directories in /profiles/bear/, which can cause issues if trying to update contributed modules later on. It is best to move these prior to installation, or you may need to rebuild your Drupal registry if moved after the initial installation process has completed. If you build Bear using the make file method above, you will not have this issue.

Core/Module Updates and Patch Maintenance:

Look at Bear as a starter kit not as a profile that will get updates. Start with Bear, then fork from it. This means you update core and modules on your own. Bear loves patches, and when you do updates you'll want to be sure you don't lose them. We recommend using https://github.com/davereid/drush-patchfile to maintain the patches to core and contributed modules as you do updates. To use this, you can add whatever patches you would like into the patches.make file in the format that you see in the file. In addition, you should move the patches.make file out of profiles/bear and to the top of your webroot (or wherever you configure drush-patchfile to look for it).