How to automate development environment setup? [closed]

Answer 1

Try out DevScript at http://nsnihalsahu.github.io/devscript . Its one command like , devscript lamp or devscript laravel or devscript django . In around a few minutes ,depending on the speed of your internet co

Answer 2

One important point is to set up your projects in source control such that you can immediately build, deploy and run after checkout.

That means you should also checkin helper infrastructure, such as Makefiles, ant buildfiles etc., and settings for the tools, such as IDE project files.

That should take care of the setup hassle for individual projects.

For the basic machine setup, you could use a standard image. Another option is to use your platform's tools to automate installation. Under Linux, you could create a meta-package that depends on all the packages you need. Under Windows, a similar thing should be possible using MSI or the like.

Edit:

Ideally, instead of checking in helper infrastructure, you check in the information that allows the build to generate the helper infrastructure. This is the approach taken by e.g. the GNU build system (autotools etc.), or by Maven. This is even more elegant, because you can (theoretically) generate infrastructure for any (supported) build environment, thus you are not bound to e.g. one specific IDE, and settings in the helper infrastructure (paths etc.) don't need to duplicate the main project settings.

However, this also a more complex approach, so if you can't get it to work, I believe checking in stuff like IDE files directly is acceptable.

Answer 3

If you use machines in a standard configuration, you can image the disk with a fresh perfectly configured install -- that's a very popular approach in many corporations (and not just for developers, either). If you need separately configured OS's, you can tar-bz2 all the added and changed files once a configured OS is turned into your desired setup, and just untar it as root to make your desired environment from scratch.

Answer 4

if you're using a linux flavor, you've probably got a package management system: thinks .rpm for fedora/redhat, or .deb for ubuntu/debian. many of the things you describe already have packages available: svn, eclipse, etc. you could roll your own packages for company specific software, create a repository (perhaps only available on the local network) and then your setup could be reduced to a single bash script which would add the company repo to /etc/apt/sources.list (debian/ubuntu) and then call a command like,

/home/newhire$ apt-get update && apt-get install some complete package list

you could use buildbot to then automate regular builds for company packages that change often.

Answer 5

I've been thinking about this myself. There are some other technologies that you could throw into the mix. Here's what I'm currently setting up:

• PXE based pre-seeded installation images (Debian Squeeze). You can start up a bare-metal machine (or new virtual appliance) and select the image from the PXE boot menu. This has the major advantage of being able to install your environment on physical machines (in addition to virtual appliances).
• Someone already mentioned Puppet. I use CFEngine but it's a similar deal. Essentially your configuration is documented and centralized in policy files which are continually enforced by an agent on the client.
• if you don't want a rigid environment (i.e. developers may choose a combination of tool-sets) you can roll your own deb packages so new devs can type sudo apt-get install acmecorp-eclipse-env or sudo apt-get install acmecorp-intellij-env, for example.
• Slightly off-topic, but if you run a Debian based environment (i.e. Ubuntu), consider installing apt-cacher (package proxy). In addition to saving bandwidth, it will make your installations much faster (since packages are cached on your local network).

Answer 6

There's always the option of using virtual machines (see e.g. VMWare Player). Create one environment and copy it over for each new employee with minimal configuration needed.