Changes required to use non-standard public directory in Laravel 5

index.php

<?php

/**
 * Laravel - A PHP Framework For Web Artisans
 *
 * @package  Laravel
 * @author   Taylor Otwell <taylorotwell@gmail.com>
 */

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Custom/non-standard public and private directory definitions.
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| A few changes are required to use custom/non-standard directories for
| Laravel's "public" and "private" paths. These default values should work
| out-of-the-box, but may be changed to accommodate more complex configurations.
| For details, see:
| https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/general-discussion/where-do-you-set-public-directory-laravel-5/replies/49083
| 
| Note: Given that these paths may be environment-specific, it may be
| necessary to push an appropriately-tailored copy of this file into place
| as part of the build or deployment process.
|
*/

$relativePathToLaravel = '..';
$relativePathToPublic = '.';

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Register The Auto Loader
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Composer provides a convenient, automatically generated class loader for
| our application. We just need to utilize it! We'll simply require it
| into the script here so that we don't have to worry about manual
| loading any of our classes later on. It feels nice to relax.
|
*/

require realpath(__DIR__ .'/' . $relativePathToLaravel . '/bootstrap/autoload.php');

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Turn On The Lights
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| We need to illuminate PHP development, so let us turn on the lights.
| This bootstraps the framework and gets it ready for use, then it
| will load up this application so that we can run it and send
| the responses back to the browser and delight our users.
|
*/

$app = require_once realpath(__DIR__ .'/' . $relativePathToLaravel . '/bootstrap/app.php');

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Run The Application
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Once we have the application, we can handle the incoming request
| through the kernel, and send the associated response back to
| the client's browser allowing them to enjoy the creative
| and wonderful application we have prepared for them.
|
*/

$kernel = $app->make(Illuminate\Contracts\Http\Kernel::class);

$response = $kernel->handle(
    $request = Illuminate\Http\Request::capture()
);

$response->send();

$kernel->terminate($request, $response);

Of note is the fact that I also wrapped the arguments to the require() and require_once() calls in realpath() to fix problems on systems that enforce open_basedir restrictions in PHP.

My opinion is that this change should be made in the Laravel source, too. (Maybe I'll submit a PR.)