Re: [tlug] linux@example.com How many widely can we do that?

[Joe Larabell <fred62@example.com>]

On Sun, 25 Oct 2009, Curt Sampson wrote:

> On 2009-10-25 19:02 +0900 (Sun), Johan Berntsson wrote:
>
> > I work for a small startup where the management doesn't care about the
> > tools used as long as the development gets done. I'm using Linux 100%,
> > with VirtualBox for some Windows cross-platform testing, but most of
> > my collegues prefer to work on Windows. Well, to each his own.
>
> It would be an interesting story to hear about what you're developing,
> how you can manage to work on both platforms (do you actually run and
> test your system on both?), and so on. If you really can use any editor,
> have all the VCS clients you need on both, etc. etc., that would be of
> interest in and of itself. And what can't you do on both platforms that
> must be done on one or the other?
>
> Personally, what you do sounds like a bit of an unusual project....

My employer doesn't necessarily dictate which O/S we have to use. I work 
in a product development group. Our product has to run on Linux, Solaris, 
and Windows so we have all those environments available in a number of 
different flavors and bit-widths.

Company-wide, everyone gets a standard-issue Dell with Windows installed. 
The IT department really only supports Windows (in a company our size, you 
can hardly blame them) but, for developers, they will set the machine up 
for either dual-boot with Linux or with a VMware virtual machine instance 
on request. But we also have a large number of VNC-capable *nix machines 
for remote login -- and that's where I do most of my work. The Dell is
just a "not-so-dumb" terminal for me.

That said, there *are* quite a few old-time developers at our Oregon site 
who started writing code on Windows before linux was really an option and 
they continue to do so even today. We use Perforce for version control and 
a home-grown build/regression system and both work seem to fine on all the 
platforms we support. QA manages the build system so most developers only 
build and test on the platform of their choice. Pretty much all of our R&D 
documentation is done on an in-house TWiki system.

Unfortunately, the product has to run on the O/S versions installed at our 
customers' locations so, that means we're constrained to develop and test 
on the "lowest common denominator" which currently means RHEL 4/5 and SUSE 
9/10. There are a few more "modern" machines around but the bulk of what 
we have available for daily development work are stock RH/SUSE machines.

When I have to do something that involves more up-to-date software than 
the company servers can handle, I use my home machine (Gentoo) and sent 
the files back-and-forth with scp. That mostly works until some writer in 
the documentation department asks how they can reproduce some diagram in a 
spec I wrote ;-)...

---
Joseph L (Joe) Larabell            Never fight with a dragon
http://larabell.org/                    for thou art crunchy
http://thelemicleague.org/        and goest well with cheese.