Hi,
Below are certain points(based on my experience till date) on the basis which I've tried to put forth my two cents on the pros and cons of having an individual development setup(for each developer)(using Ubuntu) v/s using a single development box(in this case it is Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS on which each developer would have individual user account through which they would go about day to day development - this is a sample case study with no direct/indirect reference to any individual/organization) for a team of multiple developers who would be working on a Ruby on Rails application.
Also, I would like to clarify why this comparison is done is because we are assuming a hypothetical scenario where the production app server is deployed on RedHat OS and the debate is about having the right development server in place for day to day development - keeping in mind the specific goal on how can one achieve more(be more productive and kinda spend not more time than what's ideally reqd for day to day development) with less(for e.g., simply by being smart when one has to be and finding the shortest path - reminds me of Dijkstra's algorithm ;) )
An attempt to list down the differences one by one follows below -
SE NO
|
Point of discussion
|
Ubuntu
|
Non Ubuntu - RedHat
|
1
|
Development setup
|
Individual for each developer
|
Common for all developers(one server, multiple user accounts)
|
2
|
Internet required for development
|
No
|
Yes(because we connect via putty installed on Windows to dev server).
From Home – via some VPN
From Office – Office intranet
|
3
|
Chances of intermittent connection loss to dev server when moving
laptop from one place to another say to attend meetings etc.,
|
No concept of connection being effected as internet not used for day
to day development(Your development box is your local box – Cheers J
)
|
0 – 15 %(approx.)
Impact – Need to again reconnect to the server and open multiple
putty sessions again(this mean logging into each individual session multiple
times).
1. For
starting the server
2. For
tracing the log
3. Opening
the rails console
4. (optional)
for accessing the mysql console
|
4
|
Need to commit to see if your code changes work properly on the
application
|
No
|
Yes and No.
Yes in the case where -1. You are working from your local desktop
3. Committing those changes
via something like Tortoise SVN(an interface to ease you SVN committing
process)
4. Doing an update from the server side to fetch latest code and only
then checking if your changes work properly or not.
– This approach is not
recommended because the general rule of thumb to committing code is that
you make changes, test them.. If all things work fine only then go about
committing the same.
No in the case where–
1 Directly code via putty
2. Don’t have an editor
3. Overhead of not having the editor –
a. copying the code is a challenge if same/similar functionality has
to be used in different files within the same application
b. Copying the code from one place to other spoils the alignment and
the entire copied code needs to be realigned( as a result development becomes more time consuming).
It's kinda everyone's wish to get the best of both world's isn't it :). There's a way through Samba by which you can actually map your local boxes network drive to point to one of the remote servers(provided you have access to the same) and you can specifically point it to the codebase on which you're currently working. Through this service your changes made using the editor which basically opens the code on the remote server will automatically reflect in the remote server. Sound's good isn't it :). Well yeah, I've heard sometimes people use Samba as means to deep dive into their application logs(for debugging etc.,). Hmm, but having this for day to day development would be an icing on the cake, isn't it :). The prerequisite for it to be allowed for day to day development might be that you need to have support for Samba(not sure about it in detail just sharing knowledge based on what I know or have come across till date).Things can actually get more challenging as mentioned above if you don't have Samba support.
This seems to take care of this point, but what about others... read on before you reach to any conclusion ;).
|
5
|
Do we have an independent platform where a developer is empowered to
showcase Proof of Concepts(POC’s)?
|
Yes
|
No(because we are all using a shared server – we need to be very
cautious when we experiment with things).
|
6
|
Will your application break if you develop in Ubuntu and deploy(for
prod) on Redhat
|
It depends(can’t be taken for granted it will or it won’t). A best way
to answer this is to see if equivalent packages/plugins that are used as part
of the application are available for Ubuntu and Windows. Bottom line, if this
breaks for one application it can’t be taken for granted it will break on all
applications. Root cause analysis needs to be done to go into exact details
and decisions need to be made based on the same.
|
7
|
Freedom of a developer to have his/her playground to demonstrate his
potential
|
Can do more. Every user
will have his/her own root access to install additional softwares which can
be used for the benefit of the company. Sometimes when you want to install
app specific packages also, it’s easier to do it without any approval process
in the loop(provided you are confident
of what you are DOING)
It’s more of show me the code first before you talk.(taken from the
saying – “talk is cheap, show me the code” – mentioned by Linus Trovalds the
creator of the Linux Kernel) |
Can do very less – needs to
take approval for every single installation as this server is used by
multiple people. What happens in the bargain ? – More time consuming for a
developer to show his/her potential. Every developer will not have the root
credentials only sys admin will have it(in some cases it’s the linux support
team).
|
8
|
Cost
|
Free – Open Source. Can development be cheaper J
?
|
Huge cost involved for every developer to have the individual Red Hat
development Setup.
|
9
|
Support
|
Independent. Not required, as it’s an individual desktop. If
one breaks only a developer is impacted not the entire team. To fix any
issues we have Ubuntu forums like – AskUbuntu,
UbuntuForum, Ubuntu Mailing
List, IRC
|
Dependent on Linux support teams within the corporate
organization(if such a team exists) or on the Red Hat support staff from whom
we’ve originally bought the OS.
|
10
|
Security
|
Shouldn’t be a concern as we will be using Ubuntu VM’s on Windows
platforms. There should already be company firewalls protecting our internal
systems through firewalls etc., IMHO.
|
Already taken care in a way by the support from Red Hat, Linux
support team within the company(if exists) + support from firewalls setup with
respect to the company network.
|
11
|
Single Point of Failure
|
No. One machine goes down. Use the VDI and clone the setup. We can
keep a master copy of the setup and distribute it among all team members. Any
changes to the application should be reflected in one of the master
setups(which nobody plays around with). Thereby if one developer ends breaking things, he
doesn’t have to do much to get back the latest setup reqd for the application
to be up and running. Only he will have to rework his local changes(say wrt
the POC’s which will be in WIP)
|
Yes. One machines goes berserk, several developers are impacted(that’s
why nobody wants to take risks and sometimes you lose out in the competition
just because we don’t take calculated risks to speed up things).
|
These are my own personal views and I'm open to any pointers in case I'm missing something with respect to the differences mentioned above or if you'd like to add more differences the ones already mentioned above.
I'd be happy to pass on the mantle to all readers who would like to discuss more on this topic through comments on this post. It's your playground from here, take it away :) .
Net-Net - I think the differences talk for themselves and IMHO one should be in a position to independently take a call on what works best for them as some things could vary on a case to case basis.
Cheers :)
P.S:- One plus + One equals eleven is a pun that I've used for two individual entities being combined together to give you a single result.. One of the entities is Windows and I leave it to you to figure out what the other entity stands for .. :);)
