Development Environment Advice

[PAlexC]

Hey chimps.

So, more and more, I'm doing web application stuff, or finding I need to test over HTTP.

So, for awhile, I've been running XP with IIS 5.1 and SQL2005 Express all locally on my work laptop, which is ok, but limited, and tends to get wonky with certain extensions and drivers. I also have a 5400 rpm drive and 2GB of RAM, so it slows things down.

The Work Laptop:

• XP Pro
• IIS 5.1
• SQL 2005
• ColdFusion
• PHP (needed, not installed yet)
• MySQL (needed, not installed yet)
• Ruby (wanted, not installed yet)

As you can see, that's a lot of crap that I don't even use every day, but it helps to have your entire environment on a machine you can pick up and take with you.

Now, at home, I'm starting to do some more web work on the side, but I also use my home machine for everyday stuff, some games, web surfing, banking, photos, working from home, etc. It's almost the same setup, but again, 2GB of RAM, and I rarely use all those things on a regular basis at home. I'd like to be able to just flip them all on with one button when I need.

So, what should I do? Work on Win2K3/8 on the work laptop? Virtualize? Get a separate box at home for a dev server? Dual boot?

I want clean, uncluttered, clear environments, because I pop in and out of projects over the course of several months, and things get confusing. I also don't have time to dick around with learning the intricacies of admining Apache, or digging around online for DLL's to get PHP to work with SQL. (However, PHP and MySQL are requirements for SOME projects, not all.)

Advice?

[Genesis F5]

I'm in a similar situation since I also recently moved operations onto a single machine. For me, I went with Apache and installed PHP and MySQL afterwards. I recently downloaded XAMPP since I also want to run a test mail server and it will hopefully tie everything together better.

For toggling my machine into / out of "development" mode, I put together a batch file that starts / stops the services as needed. That helps a lot when I need the resources for other projects.

I'd install everything on a seperate partition if possible just so you can leave your environment intact should you ever need / want to reinstall the OS.

[argonauta]

install xampp: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
it's an easy setup to have it all: php, mysql, apache, even an ftp server, and it has a little control panel to start or shutdown any of those.

I'm not sure, but I think that it can be installed on a thumbdrive, so you can carry it around everywhere.

If not, you can always configure your webserver so that the doc root (htdocs) points to an external harddrive or thumbdrive. That way you can have two server installs one at home one at work, and just carry the project files.

Another option for the files is to use version control, get an account at http://svndude.com/ . That way you can check in and out your projects, keep them in sync at home and work, and have some sort of backup.

or get a hosting account (dreamhost is cheap and ok), although you'd need to ftp your files every time you want to see an edit (but there are some editors that have integrated ftp, I think dreamweaver is one).

I've been wanting to setup a separate linux box as a dev server. It does has its advantages, as you can use it for some other things (file server, mp3 storage, backup, upnp server), but then you get dependent of 2 machines. I've been thinking on turning my n810 into a webserver, but not sure if it can handle it all.

[Frets]

honestly get a separate box or pay for a virtual server.

[PAlexC]

No Apache, production environments are IIS. ASP is a requirement for one of our applications as well.

I'm thinking I should just turn the work laptop into Win2K8, CS3 runs on there, right?

As for hosting: I like having it local. I don't want to have to copy/FTP files to test incremental changes or bugs. Maybe for home, it'll finally justify the Mac Mini I wanted.

Thought about doing the dev server as a VM as well.

Genesis, can you post a copy of that batch file?

[Genesis F5]

Here is the basic version (this is for starting / stopping the apache service, but you can replace the "apache2.2" name with your IIS service name:

@echo off
cls
set /p ans=(e)ngage / (d)isengage environment: 
set ans=%ans:~0,1%
cls
if "%ans%"=="e" goto 1
if "%ans%"=="d" goto 2
:1
echo "starting development enviroment..."
net start apache2.2 /y
goto finish
:2
echo "stopping development enviroment..."
net stop apache2.2 /y
:finish 

You can add additional services before / after the apache entry using the same format for both the starting / stopping areas.

I've been meaning to finish learning ASP, so I might create a better interface for toggling between IIS and Apache setups.

The jump drive is a neat idea, but reliability would be a big concern if you have all of your work in one area. Plus, probably an even bigger problem, would be access times. Some drives are pretty quick, but the over 2GB ones I've used are pretty slow. Couple that with the quick access times needed for a database (though, to be fair, a local enviroment probably won't be seeing any heavy traffic) and the convenience might be outweighed.

[PAlexC]

Thanks.

Anyone have any experience using Win2K8 as a workstation? Issues?

[FlashLackey]

How about this: http://www.virtualbox.org/ ?

[gerbick]

Thanks.

Anyone have any experience using Win2K8 as a workstation? Issues?

It'll take time to trim it down, just like Vista, but it's actually pretty damn capable as an OS. I'd use whatever you like - I'm a VMWare fan - to virtualize each of your needed test environments. And if you're going to run MS SQL, don't run it on the same hard drive - not different partition, different hard drive - as your main OS and limit all MS SQL db's in terms of memory or it'll grow like no other.

I actually like Win2k8 Server - like Win2k3 Server too, still haven't used the internal virtualization though at all... tend to not trust MS and virtualization unless I had gobs of RAM.

[jAQUAN]

Get the dev box for home. It's really nice to just remote in to another machine rather than bog your main down or have to reboot just to play a game. There are some sick deals when all you're looking for is a processor, ram and storage.

I'm also thirding XXAMP. I'm an I.T. idiot and I figured it out. Just takes a minute to configure and get used to editing your sites file. I usually redirect sub-domains for consistency. For example I'd setup home.mysite.com locally and www.* would work normally. Last time I had it installed it came with a little control panel for starting and stopping services. I never used the mail server so I can't vouch for that.

[Genesis F5]

Any recommendations for any compact server (something about the size of a router maybe?)? The reason I went to a single enviroment was I was using an older MHZ machine that was needing more maintenance than I wanted. I looked into replacing it with a preowned rackmount unit, but it still wasn't exactly what I wanted.

Two ideas I'm leaning towards right now are:

1) Getting an eeePC to use. Low power consumption + small form factor make it perfect.
2) Killer NIC for its onboard processing + linux distro. That would be the perfect idea. I could run a USB hard drive into it's USB port and completely offload the serverside enviroment. The only downside is most server applications I build are win32 and setting up a seperate *nix enviroment would be a pain.

[jAQUAN]

I'll be interested in what you come up with Gen. I'm looking into some sort of house-wide server which basically means file server/media center. Thought about taking advantage of the nix on a macmini but really don't want a show stopper of a learning curve.