Local test environment (was: [TxMt] Re: SVN?)

[Rob McBroom]

On Mar 31, 2007, at 11:18 AM, Allan Odgaard wrote:

> On 30. Mar 2007, at 18:52, Constantinos Neophytou ♎ wrote:
>
>> [...] As for 'changing files directly on the server', I'm 100%  
>> against that. If you really want to monitor the changes as they  
>> happen (which you should), set up a local environment [...]
>
> While a local testing environment definitely has advantages such as  
> being able to work offline, having zero network delays while  
> testing, etc. I also find it is a good exercise in how many  
> dependencies you have.
>
> I.e. if setting up a local testing environment is a pain because  
> you have lots of dependencies and no good view of them, or you  
> require all sorts of setup and whatnot, well, then you probably  
> should migrate to a simpler architecture, it might just be that one  
> day you want to move your site from Linux to BSD, from one hosting  
> service to another, or maybe you want to wrap up your code and sell  
> it, start it on another server, etc.

Unfortunately, a local environment isn't an option in some cases.  
Consider for example an application that manages local users and  
groups. Or an application that talks to LDAP, Kerberos, a MySQL  
database, a PostgreSQL database, and an Oracle database and assume  
that one or more of these resources contains sensitive information.  
My employer isn't going to allow access to all those things from  
someone's workstation and I happen to think they're right.

As for making changes on "the server" being a bad idea, we don't make  
changes on *the* server. We make changes on *a* server. The  
development server, to be specific. Nothing wrong with that in my  
opinion.

---
Rob McBroom
<http://www.skurfer.com/>
I didn't "switch" to Apple... my OS did.