DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports
Events Video Library
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
View Events Video Library
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks

Integrating PostgreSQL Databases with ANF: Join this workshop to learn how to create a PostgreSQL server using Instaclustr’s managed service

Mobile Database Essentials: Assess data needs, storage requirements, and more when leveraging databases for cloud and edge applications.

Monitoring and Observability for LLMs: Datadog and Google Cloud discuss how to achieve optimal AI model performance.

Automated Testing: The latest on architecture, TDD, and the benefits of AI and low-code tools.

Related

  • Deploy WSO2 Identity Server in DC/OS
  • Why Bare Metal Is Challenging VMs in Microservices Deployments
  • DevSecOps - A New Chance for Security
  • Keep Your Application Secrets Secret

Trending

  • Architecting a Completely Private VPC Network and Automating the Deployment
  • The Promise of Personal Data for Better Living
  • Build a Serverless App Fast with Zipper: Write TypeScript, Offload Everything Else
  • Application Integration for IoT Devices: A Detailed Guide To Unifying Your Ecosystem
  1. DZone
  2. Culture and Methodologies
  3. Agile
  4. Four Methods to Automate Development Environment Setup

Four Methods to Automate Development Environment Setup

There are at least four methods that can be used in different combinations to make the process of setting up a complete development environment a lot less painful.

Mitch Pronschinske user avatar by
Mitch Pronschinske
·
Feb. 16, 10 · Tutorial
Like (0)
Save
Tweet
Share
30.45K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

It's a common headache for development teams of any size to set up all the things that go into a local development environment whenever a new programmer is brought on board or moved to another machine.  There's a multitude of installations that go into a developer's machine which might include an IDE, version control, a container like Tomcat or Jetty, database management, and languages.  The database might also need to be populated.  Many developers want to automate this process, especially in agile teams.  There are at least four methods that can be used in different combinations to make the process of setting up a complete development environment a lot less painful.

1.  Installation Automation Tools

These tools can automate the installation and configuration of a workstation's services, tools, and config files.  Here are a few examples:

Puppet - This popular tool lets users define the class of a machine (development environment, web server, or something else) and it automatically installs everything, configures the software, and provides automatic updating.  Once it's set up, Puppet is a zero-click solution that checks the user's machine periodically to make sure that all the configurations are still in place.  It will detect mode or file changes and fix any problems.  Puppet is capable of handling thousands of machines.  One negative aspect is that it lacks Windows support.  Puppet is open source under the GNU license and it is a powerful tool, but it does have a learning curve.  

  • Cfengine - Similar to Puppet, it provides automated installation and config, but it has some limitations.  Cfengine has a free open source version and a commercial distribution that comes with support.  Cfengine doesn't support Windows either, but it plans on adding support early this year.

  • SmartFrog - This tool does support Windows.  SmartFrog is an open source framework (LGPL), written in Java, for configuring hosts.

  • Shell Scripts - These are another type of tool for configuring hosts.  RightScale has examples for configuring an Amazon EC2 image using shell scripts.

  • Install Packages - If the machines are running Unix, it is possible to configure hosts using just packages.  RubyWorks has a similar method where it provides the full Ruby on Rails stack by installing one package that installs other packages through dependencies.

2.  Disk Images

Disk Imaging software is a common solution for storing an image of a configured host that can be restored to other hosts.  Disk imaging methods, along with virtualization methods, are particularly useful when teams are working on a test machine.  It's easy to test and then restore the disk image to the original configured state, but keeping the configuration up-to-date can be a hassle.  New images have to be generated in order to propagate a permanent config file change.

3.  Virtualization

There are a lot of virtualization tool vendors out there including Xen, VirtualPC, VMWare, and Sun's (now Oracle's) VirtualBox.  These tools can be used to create virtual machine images with various configurations and installations.  In addition to being able to restore a machine to its original configuration state, different VMs will allow developers to work on two or more projects using several different environments that can't all be on one system (using two different versions of a core technology, for example).  A common method is to have a VM image that contains the team's whole development stack and is not attached to the corp domain.  To get a new machine image, a team member just has to copy it locally, run NewSID, and then join the corp domain with a unique machine name.  On modern hardware, this method for virtualization has no noticeable performance degradation.

4.  Source Code Control

The final step for an automated process usually entails source code control.  Teams should set up their projects in source control so they can immediately build, deploy, and run after checkout.  Developers might also want to check-in helper infrastructure (Makefiles, Ant buildfiles, etc.) and settings for their tools (IDE project files).  That should take care of many hassles associated with setup.

Open source Machine agile Host (Unix) Virtual Machine Virtualization source control dev IT

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Related

  • Deploy WSO2 Identity Server in DC/OS
  • Why Bare Metal Is Challenging VMs in Microservices Deployments
  • DevSecOps - A New Chance for Security
  • Keep Your Application Secrets Secret

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 3343 Perimeter Hill Drive
  • Suite 100
  • Nashville, TN 37211
  • support@dzone.com

Let's be friends: