Creating a Personal Webvoyáge Development Environment

Using VMware

Chris Delis, CARLI

Why might you need a personal development environment?

Multiple Developer Environment

Fundamental Issue With Multiple Developer Environments

One set of files, but more than one set of changes need to be made.

E.g., two developers working on separate features which share common files.

Suboptimal “solution”

Coordinate efforts by word of mouth (in person, email, etc.) and “take turns” editing the same files.

Suboptimal “solution”

Disadvantages:• Slows down development• Difficult to track changes between efforts

(who made which changes?)

Solution is source control.

Source control software, such as subversion, is designed to help solve these problems.

But this solution depends on allowing each developer their own personal development environment.

Where should I create these personal development environments?

• On the same server• On your own machine (laptop) using

virtualization software (VMware)

On the same server

Server

Tomcat Tomcat

vwebvvwebv VxWSVxWS

On the same server

Advantages:

• No additional hardware or software needed• No need to setup additional OS, Tomcat, and

Java

On the same server

Disadvantages:

• Need to modify Tomcat environment for each additional development branch of Webvoyáge

• This means the file structure will be different than production (xxxdb/tomcat/vwebv)

On your own machine(VMware)

Server

Tomcat

vwebvvwebv VxWSVxWS

Laptop

Tomcat

vwebvvwebv

On your own machine(VMware)

Server

Tomcat

vwebvvwebv VxWSVxWS

Laptop

Tomcat

vwebvvwebv

Laptop

Tomcat

vwebvvwebv

On your own machine

Advantages:

• File structure can be the exact SAME as production (xxxdb/tomcat/vwebv)

• You may restart Tomcat any time you wish without impacting others. (E.g., you may change Tomcat settings, add profiling tools, etc.)

On your own machine (cont’d)

Advantages:

• Virtual Machines are easy to copy. Only one setup needed; the rest can be imaged.

• VMs may also be installed on server (VMware ESX)

• Your previous (single) development environment can now become a staging area for production

How to setup master VM image

• Install your favorite OS. E.g., Ubuntu 8.04 LTS• Install recent version of Java SDK. E.g., Sun

JDK 1.6.xx• Copy (svn checkout) vwebv source files to

your new VM. Note: no need to copy any VxWS files!

• Configure vwebv to communicate with main “staging” development server (web.xml)

Edit vwebv/context/vwebv/WEB-INF/web.xml

That’s it!

You now have your own development environment where you can create your own branches, merge changes, etc., without impacting other developers.

svn copy trunk mybranchsvn checkoutsvn commitsvn mergeetc.