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I can't wrap my head around how I'm supposed to use ColdFusion Builder 3 (akin to Eclipse).
Up until this point, I've been using Dreamweaver 5, which is getting 'long-in-the-tooth', and I wanted to give CF Builder a try.
So, in Dreamweaver, it's pretty simple: you setup connections to servers using credentials... There's a Local path, which is the local copy of your code, and the webroot of the Server which is the 'live' copy of your code. Basically, you make a change to the local copy, and PUT the change to the Server. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right?
But, how does this translate to ColdFusion Builder 3?
Just to give you an idea of our infrastructure.... we have Development and Production. Each of these boxes has multiple web instances, example: Accounting, Human Resources, IT. Each of those web instances could have multiple applications.... I'm only considered about my instance, IT, on both the Production and Development servers.
Is a workspace supposed to represent an instance on a web server?
In CFBuilder, should I configure 1 server per web app?
Is a project supposed to represent a web app?
Am I supposed to use drive mappings to the inetpub wwwroot for access to web applications? Is it even considered kosher to have a drive mapping to the web root? \server\c$\inetpub\wwwroot
Where do I keep my local copy of my code?
How do I move items from Development to Production?
My main confusion is with workspaces, projects, and servers... My intent is to debug and 'view page in browser' from CFBuilder.... However, when you setup a server, under Server Mapping and URL Prefix, you're supposed to indicate the Local and Remote paths, plus this is not directly related to the physical location of the project.... and as I've mentioned, there's multiple instances, multiple applications, and the development box is not my local machine, it's a remote server...
I would really like to know how others have made this work for them.
I really don't mind this question even though it's not directly code related because I've been using ColdFusion Builder (CFB) for years and there just isn't enough good documentation out there. I now enjoy a great experience with CFB thanks to blog posts and sharing experiences with other devs :)
My setup: CFB3 running on Windows 8.1, dev server running on a Virtual Machine so it is treated as "remote server" just like yours. I also update remote staging and production servers (although not directly from CFB).
First, let's set some reasonable expectations: Dreamweaver and CFB are very different in that CFB focuses on programming and Dreamweaver on design. CFB is built on eclipse and therefore has the advantage of benefiting from most eclipse plugins.
Your question is specifically about how to set up your projects in CFB using 2 remote servers (dev and prod). It's different for everyone but I'll share my setup with you. (sidenote: My projects are also stored in Git repositories - 1 repo for every app)
Starting from the top: A workspace in CFB deals with your whole eclipse application, not just your projects. The most important things kept in this directory are snippets and plugins. You do NOT need to keep your project files in here. This is merely the main directory where all of your settings are kept. You are not required to have more than 1 workspace (I only have one). Why would you need more than one? You may be multifaceted programmer who needs to keep separate workspaces using separate tools (like different plugins, snippets, window layouts...)
To answer your next question (1 server per web app), all you need to to is configure your dev servers in the "CF Servers" tab. You need to add 1 server per web instance for every instance that you'd like to test on. Hopefully, your dev server has RDS enabled (very helpful for remote database and file viewing, just like in Dreamweaver). During configuration, don't worry about Mappings or Virtual Host Settings (I have another recommendation later). Once configured, you'll be able to assign that server to a project.
Drive mappings: I would never recommend mapping to the webroot of a shared dev server. If you were to use that drive map as your local directory, your changes will be made directly to the development server. What you want to do is create a new project by right clicking in the Navigator area and select Import > Other > FTP. Follow the steps, choose anywhere on your local drive to store the files, then choose "New project" at the end (this will add the .project file necessary for CFB to control the project).
Once the project is created, right click on it, select ColdFusion Project and choose the CFML Dictionary version you'll be using (CF11, 10, 9...). Then, select ColdFusion Server Settings and choose the dev server. This is necessary for testing.
What you now have is a local directory with your app and eclipse knows about the remote server. In order to synchronize, you right click on the project, go to Team and synchronize from there. For detailed information about synchronization over FTP, see the help section "Guide to WebDAV and FTP".
Moving to production is not as simple as it was in Dreamweaver. The FTP configuration information only allows for 1 connection (thus giving you a list of files synchronized between your project and the dev server). Therefore, you'll need a third party FTP client to synchronize between your local project and your prod server.
As promised, my last entry will be able the "debugging" which is why I said to skip the mappings and virtual host settings in CF Server config. I really, really recommend using a third party paid plugin called FusionDebug (http://www.fusion-debug.com/). This plugin facilitates the setup and allows you to step-into all of your code (which doesn't work so well in native CFB). There's a 30 day trial and I recommend you try before your buy (or license for a year in this case!)
I am currently looking at setting up an Ipad app project into subversion.
Ive had a lot of experience with windows based development and .net. With this we have just created a repository in a network folder (by just right clicking -> TortiseSVN -> create repository) , than all we have done is our developers have checked out from this directory.
How do we go about doing this in xcode. I know subversion is integrated with xcode and I am pretty confident of doing everything (from tutorials) except for the creation of the repository.
Just wondering how we go about creating a repository in a folder based up on network folder?
Thanks in advance
Google for the svn book.
It should have everything you need to know with the exception of Xcode specifics.
Honestly, you probably don't want to create a repository on someone's development machine, especially if you are giving people network access.
You should setup an actual SVN server or use an online service.
Here is a question posted in 2009: SVN server for the Mac that's easy to set up?
Here is the "official" Ubuntu guide if you chose to run the SVN server on top of Ubuntu (which is my recommendation). Google for "install svn ubuntu".
Sorry I can't post multiple links yet.
Not 100% sure since I mainly use the terminal for svn operations on mac but
if you go in XCode to the scm you can configure the repositories for your project
once that is set up (I guess you know how to do this form your question), you simply you can go scm->repositories
select the one you want and you can then modify it
I'm just getting into the practice of version control (I'd like to use Eclipse and SVN), and I'm not sure the best setup for my scenario.
I'm currently a lone developer and I have two computers (a work desktop and a home office laptop) that I like to use for development (mainly web-based stuff). I have access to a Linux-based and a Windows-based remote server, and I seem to always have files scattered between the two machines based on where I conduct the work.
Are there any instructions or best practices about how to set up a development environment so that when I sit down at either machine I have the same files to work with and the ability to utilize version control?
Some things I have used between my laptop/workstation/server.
If the paths are exposed create a local svn repository, and then use the network path to the repo from the second machine. Works well if you dont want to run a server but just use local files. My laptop and workstation have the same credentials, so pass through works great with the hidden paths '\machine\c$\etc'
I also like to use Unison for managing the files between my laptop and workstation. Its not versioning, and with date time hints it does rather well at 'which is newer'. Also, if you're the only one using both, conflicts are really low. I use this to manage my 'my documents' http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
Of course you can create an SVN server, and I have found Visual SVN to make this almost too easy. I started using this for my personal projects after the need to 'launch' to the server came up. Having the svn server on the remote server had a few benefits when it came to launching and working from home. (Or inviting other developers) http://visualsvn.com/server/
Just install SVN on one of your computers (preferably on the Linux server). I guess administrators will install SVN for you and create needed repositories.
Integration of SVN with Eclipse is really easy through plugin.
If you are new to source control (or even if you are not), reading Eric Sink's Source Code HOWTO will give a good introduction and expose you to some best practices.
I would consider a distributed version control system as well as Subversion. Even if you do go with Subversion in the end, it's good to understand all the options available to you. Personally, I'm a single developer and work in multiple locations, and have found the DVCS concept to work much better than SVN.
Git, Mercurial and Bazaar are three options. Here's a good video by Linux Torvalds which explains some of the conceptual differences.
I am implementing Bazaar as my source control solution for handling this scenario. I have used Subversion for years, but it simply does not really fit this distributed usage scenario. Bazaar does.
At my work I currently have my development environment inside a Virtual Machine. When I need to do work from home I copy my VM and any databases I need onto a laptop drive sized external USB drive. After about 10 minutes of copying I put the drive in my pocket and head home, copy back the VM and databases onto my personal computer and I'm ready to work. I follow the same steps to take the work back with me.
So if I count the total amount of time I spend waiting around for files to finish copying in order for me to take work home and bring it back again, it comes to around 40 minutes! I do have a VPN connection to my work from home (providing the internet is up at both sites) and a decent internet speed (8mbits down/?up) but I find Remote Desktoping into my work machine laggy enough for me to want to work on my VM directly.
So in looking at what other options I have or how I could improve my existing option I'm interested in what strategy you use or recommend to do work at home and keeping your code/environment in sync.
EDIT: I'd prefer an option where I don't have to commit my changes into version control before I leave work - as I like to make meaningful descriptive comments in my commits, committing would take longer than just copying my VM onto a portable drive! lol Also I'd prefer a solution where my dev environment stays in sync too. Having said that I'm still very interested in your own solutions even if they don't exactly solve my problem as best as I'd like. :)
A Distributed / Decentralized Version Control System solution will suit your needs, Git, Bazaar, Mercurial, darcs... you have plenty alternatives.
Use a version control software like SVN, SourceOffSite, etc. You just have to check-in all your changes and get the latest changes when you want to sync.
Or you can use Windows Live Sync -> https://sync.live.com/foldersharetolivesync.aspx
Hasn't anyone recommended rsync? Use an rsync client to send the diff between files. You can apply these diffs thus bringing your file up-to-date. For the smallest file transfer it's probably the best idea.
I simply use an external portable notebook drive and do all my work on that. All my PCs have it set to the same drive letter. So no copying anything .. I've not attempted to run VMs this way, however, but I don't see any reason it shouldn't simply work.
i use dropbox.
We use Citrix and then I do a remote desktop connection to my PC at work. It is not the fastest solution in the world, but it does eliminate the problem of keeping two or more workstations up-to-date.
Here is a solution I use.
Set up a VPN between the office network and the laptop.
Install the VisualSVN Server
Load all projects in the SCC.
When at the office I check out a project, work on it and then check it in. When at home or around the world I connect to the office via VPN, check out my project, do my thing then check it in. Via the VPN connection I can also RDP to my dev boxes and or servers.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
I either connect remotely to the office SVN, or VPN in and remote desktop my dev or desktop machine and carry on working. It's very rare I sync any files, but when I do it's usually with DropBox (although you can't really do that with large files).
Write program, that will syncronize all your data through internet, and then shutwodn your computer, so at the end of the day you launch it, and go home, and when you come home all data is already there
We work with a distributed team, so it is vital everyone has easy and secure code repository access. For this, we use SVN over ssl/https. It works great, reliably and secure.
Depending on the VM software you are using why don't you set up 2 different VM disks, keep your user profile/dev files on one disk and the OS and other programs that change rarely on the other.
This way you can probably get away with only having to copy the larger disk image when you've installed something new and end up only copying a single virtual disk containing your work.
Just setup a SVN server at home, forward your router port and get on with your life. rsync is also a good, fast solution. Just remember to use it over SSH.
I had a similar problem. But fortunately we had a source control server (TFS) configured so I use to work only from the local Virtual Machines stored on my external drive and than check in the required files to the TFS as an when required.
you haven't specified the OS and virtualization system, but if you're working VM images that can be mounted, e.g. XEN on linux, then you could mount the image and sync it via rsync.
i connecting to the office net work and download the lates version form svn
use the Dev mysql server
so i am just like anther computer in the office network
I imagine that most of the time spent copying involves the database. Is that right? If so, can you not simply connect to your work DB from home using your VPN connection?
You would still copy your source files (or use a source code control system as others have suggested), but this would only take a fraction of the time.
If all you need is a virtual machine from your work computer, then you could mount a remote catalog (using nfs or smb) where is your virtual machine files store and run that virtual machine from there. This should be faster than using remote desktop.
I also use DropBox, and that is key because it is important to keep it simple.
It is generally better if you can have some type of remote desktop ability, because this will allow you to use a standard workstation configuration, and it will allow for consistent connection to network resources (database server, business servers like workflow, etc).
Working offline, in my opinion, is ok for certain tasks, but overall there are obstacles for systems which connect to other resources (unless you plan to move those resources to your home box).
It was a problem for me too. So, the company bought me a laptop, and I do my work on it, at home or anywhere else.
I have a set up where a folder on one machine is synced to a folder on another machine. any changes to the contents on one machine is also made on the other machine within a minute.
So you could sync the top level folder of your work files, and have then sync to your home machine. What I like about this is that syncing is completely transparent. As far as the user experience goes, I'm simply using the file system. No external app to interact with.
I use Live Sync Live Sync from Microsoft to this. You'll need to create a Windows Live ID to use this system. It works for windows and macs.
Dropbox and Microsoft's Live Sync are good options that have already been mentioned. My personal favorite is Live Mesh, also from Microsoft. The one great feature that puts it above the other two, in my mind, is the ability to specify which folders get synched on which computers, and where the folders are located. So, for example, I synch my Visual Studio 2005/Projects folder between my work machine and my dev box at home, and I synch Visual Studio 2008/Projects between my side gig VM and my home dev box.
i have a macbook with all my dev software on it; when i go to work, i start it in target firewire mode and plug it into my work macpro with the fast processor, lan connection, big monitor, etc. this way i never have to leave my user folder but i have access to all the software and hardware available at work.
Why don't you just use version control? A DVCS?
Find here a tutorial on DVCS for Windows users (very simple)
http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2010/03/distributed-development-for-windows.html
Some ideas:
Use network storage (with SSD cache if speed is a concern), either for your code or to host your VM.
Separate data and OS into two virtual disks in your VM.
Google drive, Onedrive, Dropbox etc.
If you use Visual Studio (Code), try the Live Share extension.
Dockerize your environment. Alternatively, I keep a bash script for all the setup I did, so I could almost one-click reinstall my dev environment anywhere.
Use a second version control, covering your whole work directory. Commit and push everything before switching environments, then pull and hard reset your commit in another machine.
I'm just learning how to do things, and want to start using some sort of version control for a web app.
What's most appropriate for deploying a python or php web app on my own? I'm using linux and have a linux server.
Thanks!
SVN, but you need to be able to easily deploy your webapp with SVN.
Since it is not always a simple task, so I just point out this article which may be of interest for your project.
General principle:
Configure Apache on your development server so that it picks up your checked out working copies as separate subdomains. Using this, you can simply make a checkout of your project and it will automagically be up and running. No need to touch the Apache configuration. You need a DNS wildcard entry so that all subdomains of dev.example.org go to your development server.
The only problem with using the above Apache configuration locally is the DNS wildcard. Unless your desktop is assigned a hostname by your network's DNS server and you can set the wildcard there, you will have to make do with your localhost address. You can install dnsmasq to act as a local caching DNS server and put the wildcard on your own machine
Use dnsmasq so you can achieve the same effect on your own development machine. That way you can develop your web applications locally and you won't need a central development server. In my examples I will be assuming you use subversion for your version control, but it works virtually the same with other version control packages, such as git or bazaar.
Note: (Humor)
This other question on Subversion allowed me to point out to this article about publishing its (source-controlled) data into production, with in it probably the ugliest diagram I ever saw on the topic ;-)
If I had not bumped into git, I would've doubtless gone with SVN. Having said that, I would recommend git.
Nowadays, I would certainly go with a distributed version control system. Setup is faster since you don't need to set up a version control server and everything, all you usually need to do is initialize a certain directory within your development box for version control and you're good to go. They also seem like the way to go these days. If it were 2001, I would recommend a centralized system like Subversion. But it's 2008, everyone is moving to distributed systems and user interfaces and supporting tools tend to get better.
Here are some suggestions for you:
Darcs: Easy to learn and has all the features you will usually need
Mercurial
Git: Powerful. May take some time to understand but evolves rapidly
All three of them should be readily available in your Linux-based OS through the usual package management solutions.
SVN is great.
Nowadays the hype around DVCS.
I prefer Bazaar.
Because of it's name, the support, the feature set, and it works well on my window$ machine too.
I'm using unfuddle.com and I love it. It's free for a one person web app
The answer really depends on your way of thinking. I personally had problems switching to subversion from SourceSafe. If you come from microsoft shop, I'd suggest using SourceGear Vault, it is free for <=2 users. If you come from non microsoft area, then using subversion would be preferrable. Also please consider git if working on linux.
HTH, Valve.
Personally I use monotone, learning a DVCS is definitely the way forward.
For a one-man job, pretty much any revision control system will do the job. It's when you get into multiple people, and past that into multiple repositories, where there start to be differences.
Given that, I'd go with whatever Free Software system your development environment supports best. I see Subversion and Git mentioned and both are fine choices.
SVN would been my first choice. If I have to take a second choice I would go to CVS.
One of the most popular models out there today is Subversion. It's generally easy to setup & configure and is able to handle multiple platforms.
SVN. If one does not need concurrent access (which is your case), it is VERY easy to setup as no server is required at all. Definitely your weapon of choice.
I wholeheartedly agree with SVN. Command-line SVN is quite easy too.
While I like svn a lot, I've found mercurial handy for having the whole repository locally. (the same goes for git, but its interface is a little less polished in my opinion.)
I'm not able to answer the question as asked, because I don't develop on a Linux server.
But maybe this experience has a counterpart in Linux world.
I use a local-on-my-LAN-only IIS server (actually on an old laptop that no longer travels but works as a little server). I have VSS installed on that server too. There is an integration between the IIS Server, the FrontPage extensions on that server, and the VSS.
The upshot is that I can use FrontPage to build and edit my site and build a development image that is always backed up in VSS, and I can check out, check in, and do all of that from within FrontPage.
Now, the way I publish is I take advantage of the sharing capability of VSS so I have a deployment image that shares with the project that is actually an IIS web site. I have a deployment-image directory that I can transfer the latest checked-in material to (material that has not changed is not updated). I then deploy the deployment image to the hosted, public web site using FTP (again, only transfering new and updated files).
I present all of these details to suggest what might be the use-case of interest, even though a different solution approach is needed with Linux.
If I wasn't using a tool that integrated with the web server and also the source control at the server, I could do something similar by checking the VSS material in and out of a local directory and then pushing the updated VSS project to the IIS server web-pages directory hierarchy. The workflow is a little more clumsy. In this case, I would not edit pages directly on the development web server unless I could lock check-in pages as read-only or something.
Does this suggest anything that might be appealing in the Linux server case?
Definitively Mercurial is a good choice, quick, easy to use, perfect for working alone, or with multiple other developer, perfectly multiplateform, handles merges, branches, etc. very simply, plugin based, there are great tools out there such as nice IDE plugins (notably Netbeans and Eclipse).
Robust, it works just as you a expect such a tool to work, not like SVN (and I have years of day to day)...
Both Sun, Xen and Mozilla host all their repos on Mercurial. We're currently moving from SVN to Mercurial after a 6 month daily test, without any regret.
I once used Perforce and was impressed with it. There's GUI and command line versions and it supports Windows, Linux, Mac and Unix for both the server and client. It integrates with Eclipse and has APIs for writing your own client applications (C/C++, Ruby, Perl, Python) It only supports two users and five workspaces before you need to buy licenses though (but that is within the scope of this question).
Subversion is a good choice. For the client, there's TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/) that integrates with the shell and lets you do things with a right click on a folder. For integration with Visual Studio (I'll assume that's your environment) there's VisualSVN (http://www.visualsvn.com/) and AnhkSVN (http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/). For the server there's a one-click installer you can find here (http://svn1clicksetup.tigris.org/) that does the setup in a snap. VisualSVN also has a (free) server that you can use which provides it's own web access and security (rather than using apache) and has a mmc-snapin for managing/creating repositories and users.
CVS - No, I'm not joking. Not that it is better (it is not) or the simplest (it isn't), but it really doesn't matter at the end of the day. The important thing is to get started with ANY version control system even if it is a one-developer shop, even if it is CVS.