programmer's VM

[OogyWaWa]

i'm trying to build a good windows development learning environment VM. just wondering if you guys think there should be some stuff added to the list:


win7 x64
IIS

IDEs:
visual studio
aptana IDE
radrails ide
netbeans
eclipse
notepad
notepad++ (maybe?)

languages:
.net
RoR
ActivePerl
ActivePython
PHP

DB:
SQL Server
mySQL

other:
gcc
ant compiler
tortoise svn
firefox w/ dev adons

 

[Nothinman]

That's a pretty wide array of stuff to install, if this is just for learning you should probably pick a more specific target.

 

[OogyWaWa]

That's a pretty wide array of stuff to install, if this is just for learning you should probably pick a more specific target.

well, they are all things i'm in the process of learning. ever semester there is a new language we have to pick up

 

[Oyster]

Why are you using Win7 x64? I'd go with Windows Server 2008 x64 (I think R2's out, too). What about your source control... something like Subversion or Visual SourceSafe? Also, why both Netbeans and Eclipse? Just go with Eclipse.

 

[aceO07]

Is Windows required? Seems like .net and sqlserver only need Windows. Maybe also have a linux VM for dev?

Netbeans does RoR pretty well. I remember not liking RadRails a couple of years ago when I tried it.

 

[degibson]

Put a decent ssh client on there too.

Edit: Also gvim

 

[Nothinman]

I'd go with Windows Server 2008 x64 (I think R2's out, too)

That's a waste, there's nothing he needs Server for on there.

Is Windows required? Seems like .net and sqlserver only need Windows. Maybe also have a linux VM for dev?

As much as I like Linux I'd say stick to what the class uses even if Windows isn't explicitely stated as a requirement.

gvim is indeed awesome, however it's virtually a class within itself.

And a few minor nitpicks:

.net isn't a language. Many languages have .Net bindings.
ant isn't a compiler, it's a build system.

 

[OogyWaWa]

Why are you using Win7 x64? I'd go with Windows Server 2008 x64 (I think R2's out, too). What about your source control... something like Subversion or Visual SourceSafe? Also, why both Netbeans and Eclipse? Just go with Eclipse.

tortoisesvn
i like netbeans for java gui dev

i never really use eclipse, but i want to start learning it since it is widely used.

i'm not a huge linux guy, although i do like it. for what i'm doing, windows does it all fine and I'm used to the environment.

i could throw a ssh client on it, but i don't have any ssh servers to connect to... lol

 

[Kirby]

tortoisesvn
i like netbeans for java gui dev

i never really use eclipse, but i want to start learning it since it is widely used.

i'm not a huge linux guy, although i do like it. for what i'm doing, windows does it all fine and I'm used to the environment.

i could throw a ssh client on it, but i don't have any ssh servers to connect to... lol

the engineering college has a couple unix servers you can ssh into if you want to fool around in it.

 

[OogyWaWa]

the engineering college has a couple unix servers you can ssh into if you want to fool around in it.

imports mail;
fork;
email "pwhite"
subject:"YOU SUCK";
from: "jamesz";

could be fun....

 

[Cogman]

You might want something like cygwin in there for your unix environment (though I don't think that you really need it).

Other then that, you have a pretty wide range of stuff.

The only reason I would recommend a linux environment would be for valgrind. It is THE best free memory leak catcher available. Other then that, there isn't a whole lot of reason to do developement on linux (Other then sticking it to the man, yo). If your classes are primarly windows, stick with that.

 

[Markbnj]

Since part of the reason for a VM is partitioning the environment, I would lean toward ace's suggestion and have separate VMs set up for Windows/VS, and Linux/Eclipse. Beyond that, on the Windows side, you might want to consider .NET Reflector, Snippet Compiler, XAMLPad (actually, just install the .NET 3.5 SDK and tools, the Silverlight SDK, and any other SDKs you think you might need), Compare-It (or some other merge tool), and maybe Expression Blend. Speaking of that, if you have any other tools you use in UI workflow, like Photoshop or whatever, stick those in there too.

 

[DaveSimmons]

A couple of suggestions:

Make a copy of the "bare" VM after it's activated, if you think you might ever want to learn about tools like Wise, InstallShield or WIX. You need a system -without- all the runtimes, libraries, system files preinstalled to test deployment.

Make another copy as you install tools, as a backup. Consider the time to rebuild the VM if you install something that trashes it. Or you code something that goes horribly wrong: a co-worker wrote a bit of (all too effiective) file cleanup code that erased one of our hard drives before we figured out what he'd done.

 

[ForumMaster]

for ide's, you already have visual studio to handle .net,c++ and c# and the like. for the rest, i prefer ActiveState's komodo. wonderful for perl,python,php,ruby...really a great IDE.

 

[aceO07]

for ide's, you already have visual studio to handle .net,c++ and c# and the like. for the rest, i prefer ActiveState's komodo. wonderful for perl,python,php,ruby...really a great IDE.

What does komodo do better than Eclipse or Netbeans?

 

[gar3555]

for ides along the lines of notepad++ i recommend sublime text

 

[ivan2]

get cygwin, some professor might use that instead of forcing you to SSH into a *nix lab.

talk about SSH, get SSH (http://www.ssh.com/support/downloads/secureshellwks/non-commercial.html)

like someone else suggested, vim, try to use it as much as possible for text files of because all *nix will come with some version of vi installed. plus it handles super big file better than notepad++, which will crash and say it's out of memory.

 

[vshah]

beyond compare

 

[wonderflu]

Don't forget Emacs!