Build consistency

[Jacemdom]

Matthew Williams wrote :

We actually maintain two distinct development machines for

our application, one 6.1 and one 7.1 (RT code is 6.1, PC code is 7.1). New development is done

on yet a third machine which is the latest patched 7.1.1. I don't have a new machine for 8 yet

We found that this is the only way we could hope to keep our builds consistent. Serendipity has

provided us with enough licenses that we are actually legal, and all of this is for one developer.

Are there any advantages in duplicating complete PCs instead of using an image software like Norton Ghost to switch beetween PC configuartions?

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

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I've been experimenting virtual machine software to keep my builds separate. I recommend you try one of VM products. Vmware is market leader, but there are also other alternatives like opensource Xen, commercial Xensource and Parallels. I've been using Vmware products. Vmware server is free but has only limited functionality. Vmware workstation costs a few hundred bugs, and should be targeted for developers. They also have a subscription based product for developers, which includes practically all vmware products for a few hundred bugs a year. It may not be used in production environment.

Hardware support may be a problem if you need to have some special DAQ hardware etc attached to your computer. I've no experience in this field. If you build is time consuming, you should verify that both you processor and your VM product both can take advantage of processor-level virtualization. Modern processors have special instruction set for running parallel operating systems simultaneously.

You save your bugs and nerves if you can build all on one physical machine using multiple virtual machines. Virtualization also gives you other advantages over multiple workstations. You can create virtual machine images for different environments and this way easily test your product on different kinds of environments. If you have a mac, you can run Windows XP, Windows 2000, Linux and OS X operating systems all in one machine using VM product. With virtual machines you can store snapshots of your system and revert your environment back to some previous snapshot state when ever something goes wrong.

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