We are trying to setup Eclipse CDT (version Helios or Indigo) for our development environment. It is a multiuser environment, with about 100+ designers using a pool of 10 linux servers. The source code is in Clearcase.
Developers has Windows PCs and use vnc to login to development servers.
One option is using different Eclipse installation on each Windows desktop - but then not sure how complicated setup is to enable remote code browsing/compile/debug/test execution or cross compiling. Is this going to be a IT support/maintenance nightmare?
The other option is to have a single copy of Eclipse on the server and everyone uses the same one. Hoe feasible is this? How difficult is to manage different users' preferences in this setup? Is it possible to have that (different setups) at all? What about required hardware configuration to support this kind of working environment - when multiple sessions are active on the same server at the same time? Is this kind of configuration going to scale?
Which option is better/more suitable for our environment? Any other option that we should consider?
I checked this question and it is useful but not sure about specific of the development environment that they were trying to address.
I would like to hear some experiences from anyone who managed to successfully set it up in a similar development environment (or tried to do it) and would appreciate any guidelines/recommendations in this regard.
Related
Remote development on Linux from Windows is easily doable via SSH.
However, what about the other way? I need to build and debug my Visual C++ application on Windows, but I want to work on a Linux system.
Cross-compiling via MinGW doesn't work because of MSVC-specific libraries
Ubuntu on Windows is a good start, but I'd like to work on a real Linux system
RDP/VNC or something like that doesn't help either, because than I'd work on Windows again
So does a virtual machine
Maybe something like Powershell on Linux + SSH to the Windows Powershell?
I regularly develop Visual C# applications remotely from Linux, not MSVC for the most part, but, like you, I wanted to find a way to build and debug Windows-targeted applications and libraries on remote Windows machines without working directly in the box using RDP, Visual Studio, etc.
It's difficult to answer this question without more information about the development and debugging tools you prefer to use on Linux for the types of applications you develop. I'll try to provide a general overview and update the answer for details you add about your workflow.
Cygwin, similar to MinGW's MSYS, provides a Unix-like environment for Windows. Most importantly, Cygwin, unlike MinGW/MSYS, includes an implementation of the OpenSSH server that enables us to connect to the Windows box over SSH from Linux (or any other device with an SSH client, really). We can install the sshd package using Cygwin's setup utility. After connecting, Cygwin drops us into a Bash shell by default. With this capability, we can:
Execute remote commands and scripts over SSH.
Edit files using our favorite *nix command-line text editor (Vim, Emacs, etc.)
Mount remote filesystems locally using SSHFS (if Windows shares are unavailable).
Forward or tunnel ports if needed.
The availability of a general-purpose shell makes almost anything possible. We can execute batch files, PowerShell scripts, and native Windows executables from Cygwin's shell environment in addition to Linux scripts and Cygwin programs.
For example, we could run msbuild from the SSH session command line to build our VC++ application or we could configure our local GUI editor or IDE running in Linux to execute msbuild over SSH when we click the "build" button.
We could set up a similar environment in recent versions of Windows using the Windows Subsystem for Linux ("WSL", Bash on Windows). I personally prefer Cygwin for greater portability and ease of configuration. Cygwin's sshd can run as a Windows service, and, as an established project, Cygwin integrates very well with Windows systems (user accounts, filesystems, Windows APIs, etc.).
Working with Code
We can choose from several workflows depending on our tools and comfort-level with the command-line:
Completely text-based—all work performed through the SSH session
Use local tools on files mounted in a remote filesystem
Use local tools and synchronize files
I use the first approach. I'm a heavy Vim user, so I connect to Windows machines over SSH to do my work on the command-line using the tools and environment provided by Cygwin. The availability of tools typically found on Linux simplifies many tasks that are hard to do from the default Windows console. We can write shell scripts to automate tasks that Visual Studio might normally do for us. For example, I wrote a wrapper script around mstest that reads the XML test results and outputs them in a format that's easy to read in a terminal.
If we prefer to use a GUI editor or IDE, we can mount the remote code locally so tools can read and write files as if they were part of the Linux machine's local filesystem. We likely still need to use SSH to execute commands needed to build the projects, but many editors allow us to configure this command as the project's "build" action.
Sometimes a remote filesystem is too slow for effective editing. In these cases, we can synchronize files between the Linux development machine and the Windows host using a tool like rsync or the editor's "upload on save" feature (over SFTP, for example), if available.
Debugging
Everything works pretty well until we try to find a way to debug our applications. As of now, there is no reasonable substitute for Visual Studio's debugger when working with Visual C++ projects. We can debug managed C# applications running on the CLR using MDbg, but no comparable tool exists for C++ programs.
We can try to use gdb (from MinGW, Cygwin, etc.) for basic, low-level debugging of native binaries, like reading memory addresses, but the debugger does not yet support reading Microsoft's debugging symbols, so the debugging experience is very limited. Microsoft began documenting the PDB format a couple years ago, so we may see some compatibility in the future. Even so, it will take a long time to produce a satisfactory alternative to Visual Studio's excellent debugging tools.
For debugging, RDP is currently our best—and probably, only—option. For a more native-feeling experience, we can run Visual Studio using rdesktop (or other RDP client) and seamlessrdp to create a single-window RDP session of the Visual Studio IDE instead of a full desktop which integrates with whatever window manager we're using on Linux.
Sometimes we can get around launching a full Visual Studio debugging session for simple debugging scenarios by adding tracing to our application that outputs values to the console or to a log file. In many cases, this is faster than starting the debugger anyway.
We can also try to use Eclipse's CDT debugger configured for the Visual C++ toolchain. This may enable us to perform remote debugging using an Eclipse instance on the Linux machine. I have never tried this approach, and I expect there may be some issues when the application is linked against Microsoft's libraries.
I don't know all your requirements, but maybe you could use a gdbserver on Windows (from MinGW) and remote debug from VSCode on Linux - or any other environment you like. You can find more details in this post here. (Watch out, VSCode prevents you from running gdb unless it’s signed as mentioned in the first link.)
There is also a Native Debug VSCode extension that could be helpful.
Another solution I can think of is to use Visual Studio Online (free for small teams up to 5 persons) as build server.
As you have said, the other way around is pretty easy and nowadays even officially supported by Visual Studio 2017.
Most probably, the VS remote debugging tools for Windows wont be helpful for you.
We are developing a web application in TYPO3 Flow for one of our customers. Usally it should run on a web server over the internet, but there should also be an offline version for windows.
Our customer would sell this application with the two versions, on the web server it's combiled/crypted with Zend so his customer isn't able to change the code or anything like this.
Our idea for the offline windows application is, that we create an executable linux virtualisation with an installed apache and maybe with an pre-installed browser. So the user only starts the executable and the package will start with the browser pointing on the webapp.
Is there any solution, I think something like VMWare ThinApp (but I think this it's only for windows applications)?
Or you can build a bootable USB stick based on a linux distribution, with a custom version of some distribution like webconverger, but the user must reboot to use it.
Or you can customize a Virtual Box image, based on Turnkey Lamp Stack per exemple, but the user must have a copy of Virtual Box (that's free).
How do you wont to deal with data persistence ?
We have a third party vendor running a program/service on my servers. We need to monitor that process and see if that process is using a lot of memory or dumping/uploading lot of data or accessing any other process/stuff that it is supposed not to access.
What is the best possible way to do this? Since it is a prod box, we are not supposed to install any software on the server. So, any default tools (like Regmon/Filemon) that comes with Win 2003 would be great. But, if there is no tools that can help, I can get persmissions to install s/w.
tldr; need to keep an eye on a process using default windows tools. What is the best way??
Any help/pointers is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
As a first regmon and filemon does not comes with any windows version neither desktop nor server edition.
It is product of sysinternals (M. Rusenovich) currently are covered by MS, but not bundled in any version of OS.
Standard tools are called performance counters and are available through manage computer context menu on "My Computer" icon, or just by running perfmon.exe or perfmon.msc
You can setup exact what you want to track.
My development machine is running Windows XP SP2 (and IIS 5.1 by implication).
Until recently our deployment environment was based around Windows Server 2003 (and therefore IIS 6.0).
We are about to move to Windows Server 2008 (and therefore IIS 7.0) for a new project.
Our projects use ASP.NET MVC and WCF Services.
Are there any key reasons for us to upgrade our development machines to run Windows Server 2008 (or possibly Vista, since this also comes with IIS 7.0)?
I would say it's in your best interest to upgrade your development machines to emulate as much of the production environment as possible within your means and resources. Otherwise you may fall into traps you're completely unaware of just by deploying an application from your development machine to the server's environment, which may pertain to differing versions of IIS, the version of .NET framework each machine is running, or just the way the code is compiled or executed at runtime.
Especially since IIS 7 has been vastly upgraded since IIS 5.1, why shouldn't you work closer with it's current functionality while developing before you missing out on some great opportunities? To really know what to expect from an application in production, develop it under the same circumstances.
Edit/Added: This link may help you see at least one significant example of how differing versions can affect your project.
I would recommend that you develop against the same major build as you intend to deploy on. That said, this leaves you with a few options. First, you could build against your local IIS installation (as it appears you currently do). That means that all of your boxes should likely be upgraded to Windows Vista or Windows 2008 Server (or Windows 7 as it is running IIS 7.5). Your second option is to deploy to a remote machine. It is entirely possible to deploy your application to a remote test machine running IIS 7 and remotely debug as well. The problem is that if you have more than one developer working on the remote site, it becomes problematic. IIS can handle the remote debugging on different webs for different developers, but depending on your architecture and configuration, you may still be sharing resources between instances of test web applications.You could occasionally deadlock each other. The only benefit is that you don't have to buy licenses for all of your machines (and potentially upgrade hardware to support the OS upgrade). However, I think that would be short-sighted. The loss of developer productivity wouldn't be worth it, IMHO.
There are major changes between IIS 5.1 and IIS 7.x. The changes to the architecture, such as the integrated pipeline, can result in drastically different behavior and compatibility issues. I think you will find that IIS 7 far more developer-friendly. The introduction of things such as failed request tracing, extended logging, and enhanced error pages alone make it much easier to track down errors in your application. In that regard, the upgrade is well worth it.
Many of my users have been telling me that they'd like to run my software on their Linux machines under Wine.
But I'm a Windows Developer who has practically no experience with Linux.
Now I could spend a month or two installing Linux, learning Linux, installing Wine, learning Wine, and thoroughly ensure my application runs well under Wine. But I am still developing for Windows, so I don't want to take so much time away from development right now.
So what can I do without too much effort to get my program running as well as possible under Wine?
I did find this General help on running applications under Wine.
Download VMWare and an Ubuntu virtual machine (Ubuntu is a popular Linux distribution) from the VMWare site. This will provide you with a working Linux O/S inside your Windows environment without needing to install Linux manually.
You can then use the instructions here to install Wine, that Wiki page also provides you with some instructions on how to use it.
If you follow what Adam Rosenfield suggested and just try running your application in Wine unmodified, you will be able to determine quickly whether there are problems. My guess would be that there are some, otherwise your users would not have contacted you about it :)
There are many ways for getting help with debugging applications in Wine, consult the website for options and pick a few ways that suit you. As always, it's best not to rely on a single channel for communication.
Also, if you are more comfortable with developing in Windows, the approach of using a virtual machine will allow you to compile your code as usual in Windows and copy the binary into the virtual machine for testing (Ubuntu supports browsing/mounting Windows shares).
As long as you're not doing anything unusual such as playing around with hardware or poking around in undocumented API calls and data structures, you should be able to run your code under Wine with few or no modifications. Wine has a fairly complete implementation of the public Windows APIs, so if your program plays nice and doesn't mess around, it should just work.
Don't use too much of the windows API! Don't use anything new from Microsoft ;)
Avoid using WPF is the #1 suggestion.
But it really wouldn't kill you to test your app under Wine. It's not that hard to try; it certainly won't take months. For instance:
Use http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors#wubi to install
Ubuntu into a file on your Windows machine, then start ubuntu and install the latest Wine from
http://winehq.org/download/deb
Then try running your app's installer.
If it doesn't work, check the Wine FAQ, ask for help in one of the wine forums, and/or file bugs in wine's bug tracker.
Should take about three hours from a dead start to trying out your installer.
I was rather surprised when one of my Delphi5 applications just worked out of the zip.
The only real way this is going to work is to do it yourself, i.e. install vmware and a linux distro as Sean suggested. Linux isn't actually that hard, and we're all here to help.
Having done a quick test I can confirm that it largely works. There is an ACCVIO reading 0x34 during start up, the error dialog can be ignored and the application runs, I opened the Steve McCarthy GEDCOM.
Screenshot
This was using Wine 1.1.12 under MEPIS 7.9.94-rc1_32 under VMWare. Highly recommend to use VMWare for this sort of thing.
What language/platform do you develop with? Depending on which it is, it should be no trouble to get it running native. For example, if you use Java or Python, both operate very cleanly on Linux. Likewise, if you're a .NET developer, you should be able, with some pain, to get your app running in Mono.
Find Linux beta testers. It can reports a bug to WINE developers or find a bug in your application.
Wine is more sensitive to errors than Windows. For example, Wine will crash on NULL window handles, and fail to create windows if the class is invalid, whereas Windows is more robust and will just circumvent the error.
It's an opportunity to clean up your code.
I was amazed at how well Wine ran my app the first time I tried. However, I had to get rid of a third-party driver-based component.