schlitt.info - php, photography and private stuff
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

:Author: 		Tobias Schlitt
:Date:			Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:29:46 +0100
:Revision: 		1
:Copyright:		CC by-nc-sa


==================
Back to Windows...
==================

:Description:
    Today I needed to start up my VMWare to test some PHP stuff on a Windows
    XP installation. I was quite curious, how I would perform after more than
    4 years completly without Windows. Here are my experiences...

Today I needed to start up my VMWare to test some PHP stuff on a Windows XP
installation. I was quite curious, how I would perform after more than 4 years
completly without Windows. Here are my experiences...

The first thing I wanted to do was setting up PHP. After a glance of "emerge
dev-lang/php" I decided to download XAMPP and install the all in one package.
So far so good, PHP seemed to be running after not much hassle, although I
first needed to figure out the website of XAMPP (it is `here`__, if you are
ever searching), then downlod the installer and run it manually. Anyway, it
gave me a lot of extra stuff and in fact installed a complete web develompment
environment for me.

.. __: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

Good, so I wanted to checkout `eZ Components`__ from SVN. I remebered how to
open a (what they call) "console" using "Start" -> "Run" -> "cmd.exe" and
typed "cd De<tab>". Wow, that even worked! I'm amazed. But that only for a few
milliseconds, because "svn co `http://svn.ez.no/svn/ezcomponents/trunk`__"
produced a nice error message. So - after `downloading SVN manually`__ from
the web, installing it and adding its binary to the PATH variable (thank god,
someone in the office knew how to do this) - this worked, too. Setting up the
eZ Components environment was as easy as on Linux, since we provide a script
called "setup-env.bat", which handles that job for you.

.. __: http://ez.no/ezcomponents
.. __: http://svn.ez.no/svn/ezcomponents/trunk
.. __: http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=91

I tried out running some of our test suites, which also worked fine and turned
to debug the things I neede to debug... "vim ConsoleT<tab>/s<tab>"
``*``\gnarf``*``\, the auto completion "feature" of the "console" only works
with backslashes. Again... "vim ConsoleT<tab>\s<tab>"... gives "vim
ConsoleTools\.svn"... ``*``\argh``*``\. Whatever, when I finally had the
correct path to the file I wanted to edit, I realized: There is no VI on
Windows... Ok, so I downloaded `GVIM`__ for Windows and started editing and
fixing.

.. __: ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/pc/gvim70.exe

Great, after some messing around with newlines on Windows, stuff worked as
expected. "svn diff" produced a nice patch, which I could finally copy from
VMWare to Linux again. Over there I noticed that I broke something and fixed
that again. Another patch, copy to Windows "patch -p0 < patch.txt"... runs
into an error... ``*``\grrr``*`` So, I `downloaded the patch binary`__,
installed it and... ran into some weird error. Thank god I only changed 1 file
and so decided to copy this one manually.

.. __: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/patch.htm

That's only a short abstract of my day with MS Windows XP and my personal
result from this is: My finger hurts from all those mouse moving and clicking,
my eyes hurt a bit from all those jumping windows and popup stuff, my blood
presure is on about 180 because of the piece of shit what they call a console,
I lost about 1 hour to search for software on the web and I was 3 times close
to throwing my notebook out of the window...

My conclusion (again): **Windows? No thanks!**

Note: Some of the mentioned stuff definitly results from me not being used to
that $%&!?§ anymore, anyway, I think it sucks...


..
   Local Variables:
   mode: rst
   fill-column: 79
   End: 
   vim: et syn=rst tw=79

Trackbacks
==========


Comments
========

- Mike Thorn at Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:37:46 +0100

  That 'piece of shit' console is easily replaceable via cygwin with something
  you'll be more than comfortable with. Windows has better cvs/svn clients
  than mac or linux have currently (I'm thinking wincvs and tortoise cvs/svn).
  

  It's a pretty darn nice os for developing php really. I would never run it
  as a server, but I sure as hell prefer it for my development workstation. It
  works, it stays out of my way, and the dev tools on it rock. Komodo Edit +
  pgadmin3 + tortoise svn make for a very rapid development for me. Struggling
  on linux between psql (couldn't get pgadmin to compile on several distros)
  while juggling multiple vi windows after giving up on trying to make the
  gedit/kate fonts suck less was just too much of a hassle.HK

- Toby at Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:44:53 +0100

  If you install Cygwin, you could also simply install a Unix! :) Beside that,
  I like the original SVN client most, its usage is so much faster than the
  using any kind of GUI.

- Daniel at Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:49:26 +0100

  I noticed that people working with linux have basic problems on Windows and
  vice versa.

  Installing php + apache from setup.exe instead of XAMPP usually takes me
  about 5min.

  For SVN only tortoise. The best I worked with.

  And of course Zend Studio as an IDE.

  Btw: you lost 1hour for searching?!? Do you know that there is a google?
  Searching for the above shouldn't take more than 5-8min, no fence.

  Regards, Daniel

- Toby at Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:53:48 +0100

  I admit, 1 hr was a bit overdriven... ;)

- Björn D at Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:43:55 +0100

  After reading this I thought my MS stocks would fall... but they didn't... i
  guess they still do good soild business.

  I like both linux and windows.

- gggeek at Mon, 19 Mar 2007 10:20:07 +0100

  Most of the devs hanging around here would have a [much] harder time
  figuring out how to set up a working environment under ubuntu, not to talk
  about 'exotic' distros such as slack.

  And no, I do not mean "open synaptic and fetch the complete stuff", I mean
  'get apache, php and db of choice recompiled using all the extensions we
  will be using in production, but no more': at least under windoze the php
  extensions are enabled/disabled by default via single line php.ini editing,
  whereas on linux using enable-all=shared is not the best documented option.

  BTW: win sw I find invaluable: - scite text editor - as fast as notepad to
  start, but with all the coding goodness you need - total commander - best sw
  ever - unxutils - for running make, fgrep etc without having to install the
  complete cygwin monster

- Pavel at Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:22:59 +0200

  I really tried to migrate to Linux but the only thing I'm completely missing
  in Linux console is tortoise svn checkin GUI where one is able to see diffs
  and revert. It also spellchecks log message and has very nice
  autocomplete(it parses changed files and autocompletes class names, methods,
  file names etc). If only there was such a ncurses tool for Linux...

- Thierry B. at Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:36:23 +0200

  Personaly coming from Windows and not being a shell fan, I succeeded to
  become almost as easy as I was with TortoiseCVS / Winmerge using Cervisia /
  Kompare.