Are there any equivalents in the Windows world for patch stack management tools like Linux's quilt? I'm trying to come up with some development workflows for our environment, which need to work on both Linux and Windows. I can come up with a beautiful system for Linux using quilt and the like, but unless I can find a way to replicate it on Windows as well (including pretty GUI's for all the command-line-phobic developers), I'm basically stuck.
Maybe Mercurial's Queues can help? I do believe they work in the Windows implementation of Mercurial, too.
I use quilt on Windows by way of Cygwin.
Related
Is Cygwin considered robust and safe enough to be used on enterprise applications?
Do you know Enterprise applications that were developed or using Cygwin?
If you've been using cygwin - how often did you need support? Is there a fine-support for Cygwin? how well was the support you were given?
Thank you very much.
Why on earth would you even consider cygwin towards any sort of enterprise application? Even their site directly gives multiple signs it shouldn't be used for anything critical. You can't run native linux apps and you have to rebuild your app from source if you want it to run. It won't make your apps able to use any *nix functionality like signals, ptys, etc. All it is is a slim Linux type API layer....to answer your question, I don't think anyone would want to use cygwin in an enterprise application.
Like Maz asked, why wouldn't you just run linux? What potential benefits would you ever see coming from cygwin in an enterprise environment?
The best answer to your question may be obtained from the Cygwin web site. The answers obtained there come directly from the maintainers of the Cygwin DLL and ported software.
There are some options for me for Mercurial on Windows (I know there is the .msi), most likely:
Cygwin
Bare Python
I'd like to keep a custom mercurial install with some extensions (most likely for GIT/SVN Integration) for three machines (Win32 / x64). So, its likely I'd need to keep the python runtime installed as well.
How would you suggest me managing that?
Thank you
UPDATE: TortoiseHG is an option, but I am concerned about: I only use CLI and MercurialEclipse, with no need to place a burden on my Windows Shell (and I am somewhat hardcore about that). Remember even with TortoiseHG I'd like to add custom extensions for stuff like GIT.
I'm going to shameless steal Master Geisler's obvious answer:
TortoiseHg
It gives you everything. Even kdiff3.
I actually use it exclusively from cygwin. Makes you forget about Windows for a while.
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What are your recommendations for setting up a development environment in Windows, especially when not using an IDE. I am attempting to familiarize myself with Windows, and I feel a bit lost. What do developers commonly work on, especially when developing in multiple languages (e.g. Java, Python, C) in the same time.
So far, I have been a hardline using Mac+Linux environments where I love my command line a lot. I pretty much run all my compilations, testing, code repository commands in the terminal and have multiple terminals all the time. Terminal features (e.g. integrated bash completion, easy copy&paste, easy to setup environment variables) and package management tools (e.g. apt-get, port, fink) are quite handy. I dislike hunting down different websites to install their latest binary build.
Coming back to my question. My question is two fold:
What's commonly used? Do developers on Windows commonly use command line, or just be satisfied with an IDE?
For comers from Linux/Mac world: what do you recommend to get up to speed?
NOTE: I realize that a lot of Windows developers haven't used Linux, so they may not know what I'm talking about when it comes to Linux environment.
It's almost unheard of to not use an IDE for Windows development.
I started programming in the early 80's so grew up on the command line, but nothing beats a modern IDE for productivity.
By far the most common choice is Visual Studio, though I have also used #develop (open source) and find it a fine platform to get up to speed with.
I have used Eclipse extensively (on Linux and Windows) and find Visual Studio to be easier to use. I especially miss options for debugging under windows such as moving the instruction pointer around during debug and change-and-continue (change the code, within limits, while debugging, move the instruction pointer back if necessary, and keep debugging).
If you have used Eclipse, Visual Studio or #develop will not be that hard to get used to.
I tend to install cygwin, which is a unix emulation layer and includes many of the standard unix utilities (grep, awk, sed, etc). You can use bash or any other unix shell with cygwin to basically give yourself a unix environment on windows.
There are some downsides, paths are a good example. Windows programs expect windows paths while the unix tools expect unix paths. You can convert between the two using the cygpath program, but sometimes its tricky to know when to use it.
Another thing I do fairly often is create a bunch of batch files that load different programs onto my path. This allows me to have different version of say java installed and I can pick the version I want to use for any given shell session. I link a bunch of these together so that I have a full environment for the program I'm working on. For example, if I require java 1.5, maven, subversion then I would have a batch file to load each into the environment, then have a master file that loads all of them for a standard environment.
This approach gives a lot of flexibility and is really easy to maintain and work with different environment simultaneously.
Most windows developers that develop on the microsoft stack of products probably use Visual Studio. For windows development without Visual Studio, SharpDevelop is the current most popular alternative.
However if you are looking for a user experience more similar to linux you can always use windows command prompt and all of the command prompt compilers still exist. Just like with linux you'll have to modify your environmental variables to make everything work you you'd like it to.
If that still isn't close enough to the feel on linux, you can try out Cygwin.
Many of your common utilities from linux like gdb do have windows builds as well.
And of course there is the Eclipse IDE that is used for many languages, by many people, on multiple platforms. It is very extendable.
Some other tools you may be missing:
GCC - Available Via Cygwin
MS Build can give you similar functionality to what you had with make (I'm not sure if nmake is still used/supported)
Vi/Vim
Grep
SysInternals will have lots of various file/process monitoring utilities to hopefully adequately replace what you miss being able to simply get from /proc
Wireshark(or ethereal) to replace well... wireshark/ethereal/
Tail is available in the Windows Resource Kit
Emacs
Hopefully that covers most of your basic tasks.
Microsoft now has a real shell for Windows: Windows PowerShell.
In addition to Cygwin, there are ports for a lot of the GNU utilities and toolchain to Windows. GnuWin32 seems to be a more up-to-date version than UnixUtils. MSYS is essentially a port of BASH to Windows, but it's fairly useless without the MinGW userland.
C++ / .NET Development: Visual Studio 2008
Java / PHP Development: Eclipse IDE, which also supports C/C++.
For a non-IDE solution, Notepad++ is a very good code highlighter that supports many languages.
Simply install cygwin. The quality has improved dramatically in recent years. I'm currently running cygwin x64 on Vista, and it's great.
One thing to especially take note of in cygwin is your path. Most troubleshooting with scripts and installed software should begin there.
The other tip I'd give is to use the rxvt terminal over the standard issue cygwin terminal. It might be installed by default nowadays, but check to make sure.
Visual Studio for .net/C++ (even the express editions are useful)
The sysinternals tools rock, especially Procmon and process explorer.
If you do native/C++ work knowing windbg can be helpful
Notepad++ and gvim are my preferred editors
For doing command line/shell stuff I often use python to write short scripts (for anything but the simplest batch file)
If you are familiar with .net then learning powershell isn't much of a stretch and there is a ton of functionality available
I am trying to learn a little about driver development and my question is, which OS has an easier API to develop drivers with? Windows or Linux?
Remember that I am new to this.
Thanks
If you are doing this for learning (I guess its your case), then go for Linux, you will have a more general ideal on how an OS works, you will interact with low level implementation straight to the core.
If you are just writing a driver for a device, I recommend using Visual Studio under Windows, it has a lot of features that will really help on your devel.
I am pretty sure you'll get lots of Windows vs Linux war here, unfortunately.
On Windows, you'll get pretty good development tools, with some awkward stuff, but that you can get along with easily. API is documented provided you have access to a Windows Developer account. Remote debugging is supported and it helps a lot for these kernel stuff that are triggering BSOD so quickly.
On Linux, you'll need to get your hands more dirty. Rubini's "Linux Device Drivers" is a very good starting point. Openness will bring you more flexibility, and more understanding of what is happening.
This tutorial might be helpful.
It is about writing a simple device driver for linux.
My personal idea is Linux. You can see the entire code other than an API.
I think Windows is good.
Because it has a rich set of API's which is easier to use
I work on Linux all the time and I'm clueless about Windows, not even having a Windows box. Is Git nowadays working on Windows? Or am I making problems for my Windows pals by using it?
As far as I can tell msysgit works perfectly well under Windows Vista.
This after a whole 2-month experience checking out plugins and applications for Ruby on Rails :-)
Anyway, it was a breeze to install, no problem.
I have had no problems, even with the gui tools (gitk and git gui), using git from Cygwin. The Cygwin people are very conscientious and have a large community to boot.
Yes it does. Check out this screencast at GitCasts.
You should also checkout Git-Extensions which adds git commands as shell extensions - works great with msysgit.
There's a port of Tortoise for GIT, in version 0.4 so far:
Tortoise GIT
I've heard good things about it, but a sticking point for me (and the Japanese company I work for) is lack of cross-platform Unicode filename support. It depends if that particular feature is important to you.
See Issue 80 in the msysgit bug tracker.
See the What DVCS support Unicode filenames? question I asked about this.
It works, but not well. If you Google around a bit, you'll find the port which uses MinGW. The main problems are instability and some very Linux-like tools (gittk). If you really need it though, you should be able to get by.
In the case you are primary using Eclipse as your IDE, there's a fine team provider called EGit, which is pretty easy to install. Check this: http://www.eclipse.org/egit/