How to set up file permissions for Laravel?

I’m using Apache Web Server that has the owner set to _www:_www. I never know what is the best practice with file permissions, for example when I create new Laravel 5 project.

Laravel 5 requires /storage folder to be writable. I found plenty of different approaches to make it work and I usually end with making it 777 chmod recursively. I know it’s not the best idea though.

The official doc says:

Laravel may require some permissions to be configured: folders within
storage and vendor require write access by the web server.

Does it mean that the web server needs access to the storage and vendor folders themselves too or just their current contents?

I assume that what is much better, is changing the owner instead of permissions. I changed all Laravel’s files permissions recursively to _www:_www and that made the site work correctly, as if I changed chmod to 777. The problem is that now my text editor asks me for password each time I want to save any file and the same happens if I try to change anything in Finder, like for example copy a file.

What is the correct approach to solve these problems?

1. Change chmod
2. Change the owner of the files to match those of the
   web server and perhaps set the text editor (and Finder?) to skip
   asking for password, or make them use sudo
3. Change the owner of the web server to match the os user (I don’t
   know the consequences)
4. Something else