Re: [PHP] Improving development process / help with developer setup

Hi,
Thanks for all answers. Please let me add that I do use CVS (migrating to
SVN) and the reason to use samba is that doing this allows the developer
machine (windows) to access the shares hosted in a linux server so when
he/she tests it will be run in the 'same' environment that the staging and
production servers and because in order to assure browser compatibility they
have to test from firefox/IE.

So, in order to allow phpunit to be ran, have the firefox/IE support and use
xdebug I have two basic options:
a) stay with windows, install XAMPP (or any other all-in-one). And live
with the fact that some things will have to be taken care of (such as
PATH differences between unix/windows)
b) switch to linux with the development stack, enable a windows server to be
connected from rdesktop so they can test the IE

In both cases I'll have extra work in order to maintain the developer's
machine somewhat synchronized with the production server.

Am I missing a third/fourth (better) etc option?

thanks.

On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 8:44 PM, Gabriel Sosa <sosagabriel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I suggest you if you are running live on linux, then developing on
linux, could be the same dist or not..
but definitely don't mix OS, because the extensions could fail, etc.
one big issue it's the case insensitive in windows.

definitely some version control system such as SVN or GIT

you can use Hudson for continuous integration

and selenium for automatics QA test over browsers

again, try to don't mix OS.

saludos

gabriel

On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 1:44 PM, David Otton <david@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
2008/5/10 robert mena <robert.mena@xxxxxxxxx>:

I am looking for tips regarding improving the development process. I'll
explain my current setup and please feel free to comment.

My developers all use windows + eclipse PDT, the workspace is hosted
(via
samba) in a Linux server with Apache/PHP/MySQL. I am in the process of
adopting Unit testing (PHPUnit2) and debug (Xdebug) so I have concerns
about
how to property use this.

For example, in my current setup I'd have to enable SSH so they could
run
the tests from the command line in the development server, but I am not
sure
if I could remotely use Xdebug.

Your description (specifically, Samba) suggests that you're not using
source control. If you want to go for TDD (I don't know that you do,
but IMO it's a good direction to move in) I would suggest a
three-server setup - dev, staging and live.

The dev server(s) are where you work. One per developer. Once you're
happy with your code and your tests, you commit your changes to source
control. This is where it gets clever. You can use pre- and
post-commit hooks to run an automated build process that pushes the
changes to a staging server, automatically runs the unit tests, and
accepts/rejects the commits based on the test results. You can even
lint the code, and reject anything that isn't in the house style.

With larger projects, where an entire publish-and-test on each commit
becomes impractical, you can just run the build process and unit tests
every n hours, and mail out the results.

Publishing to the live server is simply a matter of running the build
scripts with a different destination.

On top of all that, run an issue tracker. /Everything/ goes in the
issue tracker, bugs, features, whatever. When you make a commit, that
commit should be closing an issue in the issue tracker (via commit
hooks again). That way you can track each change that's been made back
to its reason.

All of this is opinion, of course, there's no Right Way. Just take
what's useful to you.

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Los sabios buscan la sabiduría; los necios creen haberla encontrado.
Gabriel Sosa

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