Windows development workflow

[CrazYmonkeY159]

So I am just wondering if there are any people on this forum who develop on Windows exclusively (or do not feel the need to develop under any *nix OS). How is your workflow like? do you run into many road blocks?

I am asking because I am trying to justify installing a Linux virtual machine on my SSD (taking a chunk of space with it) and I'm not sure if I can get away with just using windows to develop. I frequently use git/maven/eclipse which are very simple on *nix systems.

 

[shogun]

git / apache and eclipse work just fine on windows. On one of my dev boxes I have apache and IIS running, both with PHP. It also runs both sql Server and mySql.

I can only imagine that you'd want linux installed because:

A: You prefer linux
B: You would like to compile some code on linux that will run on linux (I'm not talking a web app that can run under apache)

If you already have windows on the machine, I can't see a reason for linux other than those two above... especially if you are doing web dev (and I am making the assumption that you are, else you likely wouldn't be asking this question).

 

[semaphore]

So I am just wondering if there are any people on this forum who develop on Windows exclusively (or do not feel the need to develop under any *nix OS). How is your workflow like? do you run into many road blocks?

I am asking because I am trying to justify installing a Linux virtual machine on my SSD (taking a chunk of space with it) and I'm not sure if I can get away with just using windows to develop. I frequently use git/maven/eclipse which are very simple on *nix systems.

I dual boot, .NET on windows.

Ruby, Python, C++ on Linux.

 

[guest2013-1]

I'm running a pure LAMP install on VirtualBox. I don't like IIS serving up PHP because there's always some dumbass error that you need to spend hours on to fix, that just works straight out of the box if you had Linux.

It doesn't take much space at all, I dedicate a 10gb chunk of drive to my Linux virtual box. Obviously it depends on what you want to store on it.

 

[Waansin]

I've used Vagrant on Windows with the Windows Github client while other project members used Macs. The only really important thing to worry about was automatic line ending conversions. I ended up forcing my project files to retain their original line-endings for Linux.

With Vagrant you get to use all of your Windows editing tools and get to share those files from within your Linux VM. The VM normally runs some web server and serves the project files through a shared folder.

Any project I start now, whether on Mac or Windows, involves creating a new Vagrant setup.

 

[shogun]

I'm running a pure LAMP install on VirtualBox. I don't like IIS serving up PHP because there's always some dumbass error that you need to spend hours on to fix, that just works straight out of the box if you had Linux.

It doesn't take much space at all, I dedicate a 10gb chunk of drive to my Linux virtual box. Obviously it depends on what you want to store on it.

Yeah, but if IIS is the only gripe, then installing apache isn't exactly difficult.

 

[InvisibleJim]

If you used Virtualbox, there are a couple of features you might find helpful:

use dynamic allocation for your virtual drive (vdi file) to keep the initial size down
Alternatively use a small fixed size partition for the Linux OS and keep a .vdi for project files on external drive/network drive/iSCSI target
Keep the whole vdi file for your vm on external/network/iSCSI target
You can set up shared folders between your host system and the linux guest
Install the Virtualbox Guest Additions for your guest OS and run in seamless mode (Ctrl+L to go in and out of seamless. A nice feature.)

 

[CrazYmonkeY159]

I've used Vagrant on Windows with the Windows Github client while other project members used Macs. The only really important thing to worry about was automatic line ending conversions. I ended up forcing my project files to retain their original line-endings for Linux.

With Vagrant you get to use all of your Windows editing tools and get to share those files from within your Linux VM. The VM normally runs some web server and serves the project files through a shared folder.

Any project I start now, whether on Mac or Windows, involves creating a new Vagrant setup.

Can you set the github client to use non-github hosted repos? It looks really nice and metro-y. Also is there a 'gitk' view?

 

[_kabal_]

I just use the eclipse/sts, github shell and tortiosegit on windows, no issues

github shell running on console2 with powershell is awesome