How to setup a cloud-based development environment

For sometime now, I’ve wanted to have an easy way to synchronize my projects across my desktop and my laptop so that, regardless of what machine I’m using, I can start up my development environment and work on any given project. Typically, all of my machines contain the same collection of tools for getting work done, but it has always been a headache making sure that each machine has the most recent version of any given set of files. Until this point, I’d either been maintaining recent copies of files on a USB thumb drive, or I’ve been uploading files to my server so that I can pull then down whenever needed. Unfortunately, this requires that files also be copied or uploaded to said locations whenever I’ve finished working on them.

Thanks to Dropbox, which I’ve previously mentioned, this is all possible and none of the additional ‘busy work’ for manually synchronizing the files is necessary. Although it requires a little bit of work to setup, the initial overheard is completely worth it. Additionally, I’ve configured my machine so that my IDE and web server all reference the same synchronized directories across both of my machines so that not only is my IDE always loading the most recent version of my projects, but my local web server is referencing the same directory and thus only needs to be started in order for me to begin testing my work. For anyone that is used to uploading or copying files to another directory, such as htdocs, this is invaluable.

This configuration ultimately results in a seamless development environment that capitalizes on Dropbox’s freely available cloud computing model.  Here’s how I set everything up.

Software I’m Using

Dropbox. I’ve nothing but good things to say about Dropbox - it’s a file synchronization utility that utilizes Amazon S3 for it’s backend and AES-256 encryption for security. It includes a desktop client for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and also offers a web-based tool for when you’re using a machine that doesn’t have the client. 2GB accounts are free, 50GB accounts are $99 / year.

Aptana Studio. This is an Eclipse-based web development IDE. It features all of the same functionality as Eclipse but is tailored more towards web developers. There are some minor functionality changes that make the user experience better, but it’s still Eclipse at it’s core. Although that has been my web development IDE of choice for a while, Eclipse works just as well and I’ve included some configuration notes for it in this post.

Apache. For local web development, I use an XAMPP installation. It features a full array of commonly used, free tools for web development. Mainly, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It also features additional packages none of which are relevant to this post. More often than not, I use Apache as my web server, but IIS’ web root directory can be modified just as easily.

My Desktop

My desktop is the primary machine on which all of my files are stored. One hard drive contains the operating system and program files, while all other files are contained on a second internal drive. This storage drive is the drive on which I perform weekly back ups. Additionally, this drive was subject to the organizational modifications necessary for sharing my project files.

After coming up with the directory scheme that I was going to use to share my files, I installed Dropbox and pointed it to said directory. This is what will ultimately facilitate the access to these files. Ultimately, my storage drive is structured something similar to this:

Notice that my shared directory is the directory that Dropbox manages. All of the files that I’d like to be able to access frequently are kept in this specific directory. The structure doesn’t particularly matter, but I recommend setting up a directory solely for projects so that it’s easier to reference it from within your IDE.

My Laptop

Since the primary purpose of my laptop is to help me get stuff done whenever I am away from my desktop machine, I don’t need all of my files, such as music and video, on my laptop (what are iPods for?). I only need files relevant to whatever it is on which I am currently working. To that end, I setup a single directory on my laptop that acts as my working directory (similar to a home directory for you Linux guys) - everything that I’m typically going to load or save on the laptop will be retrieved or stored somewhere in this directory. This specific directory looks like this:

 

 

Essentially, of course, it is the exact same directory. Nonetheless, all of the overhead of updating either machine when I’ve modified any set of files has completely been passed off to Dropbox. Furthermore, there’s only one directory structure to maintain. As far as I’m concerned, every file is always located in the same place. Anyway, all of this is accomplished by simply installing Dropbox and setting up it’s reference directory to one of your choice.

Specifying The Project Workspace

Once you’ve got your directories configured in whatever way works best for you, you’ll be ready to configure setting up Aptana or Eclipse to use the synchronized directory. Because Aptana is based on Eclipse, but features some slightly different configuration options, I’ve included how to setup the workspace for both IDEs here.

Aptana

From the File menu, select Switch Workspace. This will bring up a dialog allowing you to specify in which your project files are located. In the Workspace text box, point it to a directory in your Dropbox directory. Of course, you’ll have to move your existing projects here; however, this will ensure that all projects will be synchronized across your machines.

Eclipse

Updating the workspace directory for a standard Eclipse installation is a little bit more tedious, but nothing terribly difficult. Navigate to your Eclipse installation directory and look for a directory called configuration. Within that directory, you should notice another directory called .settings. If you don’t see it, you may need to configure your file manager to show hidden files. If you’re unable to find this file, or are having difficulty finding the proper directory, you may be better off doing a standard operating system search for the file from the start menu.

Once you’re in the .settings directory, find a file called org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs. Open it in your favorite text editor and find the line containing RECENT_WORKSPACES. Update the value of that key to the new location of your workspace. Either way, once you’ve updated this file, be sure to restart Eclipse.

Configuring Apache

Lastly, in order to configure your local Apache installation to host all of your various projects from the workspace, you will need to make a change to the http.conf file. This file is typically located under the conf directory in Apache’s installation directory.

Once you’ve found the file, it’s normally a good idea to make a backup copy of the current working configuration. I typically do this by copying the file and renaming it with a .original extension. Once you’ve opened up httpd.conf in your editor, you’ll need to find the lines specify DocumentRoot and Directory. Update the values of those keys to the exact same directory as your Eclipse workspace.

Assuming you’ve completed these steps correctly, repeat them for all of the machines that you wish to have synchronized via Dropbox. This will create a seamless development environment across them all. I’ve personally found that for someone who wishes to take advantage of the cloud but are on a budget, this configuration has proved extremely useful in working on multiple projects regardless of where I am. In the future, I’d like to store more of my data in the cloud, but I’m not quite ready to toss everything up there just yet.

This entry was posted on November 06th, 2008 and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.