Best setup for Linux development from Windows? [closed]

Answer 1

An easy to setup option would be to run Eclipse natively in windows but deploy the code via a Samba share on the Linux machine (which you can mount as another drive) (or SSH/SCP if SMB is not an option) and then run it there via SSH console.

Another easy to setup option is to simply develop on Linux via freenx or a similar tool instead of a full blown X session, check this answer: https://serverfault.com/questions/11367/remote-desktopping-from-windows-to-linux/11372#11372

The other options (Virtualization, Linux running inside windows, Cygwin) are indeed valid but have their drawbacks, like being more machine demanding, harder to setup, or not equivalent enough to the actual linux environment, but may very well be worth your while if you have the machine and the scenario justifies their use.

Doing everything on the Linux side will always have some drawbacks if your machine is Windows.

I personally have a Linux box where everybody else has Windows and do Windows dev inside a VM, but it has costed me a lot of RAM and some network setup pains.

Answer 2

You could take a look at setting up a svn server on the linux box and then using something like TeamCity todo a build on commit. You could write your code locally and do a commit when you want it to be compiled.

Answer 3

I find coLinux tremendously helpful when developing on Windows for Linux, it's basically a linux system running in parallel to your Windows OS (i.e. as a service) and can be configured to simply show up on your LAN, basically like a virtual machine does. Also, it's much more full featured than CygWin, and its performance is really remarkable - I can easily run non-trivial stuff under coLinux, and still run simulators at 90+ fps.

Also, coLinux can be easily set up to run X11 and window managers like gnome/KDE, so that you can for example use something like vnc to access your linux desktop.

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine . For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using any general purpose PC virtualization software.

_{(source: colinux.org)}