[VPC] Using Virtual PC for developer portability
I've been
using VPC quite a bit lately. At work, we've got a few applications which can
take days to get set up for development - one app is ASP.NET mixed with VB DCOM
on DB2, another is even more confusing. Both take a few days to configure, and
that's if you follow the directions and ask the guys who built it. That kills
developer portability - a 30 minute bug fix becomes a 30 hour bug fix if the
developer hasn't gone through the installation initiatiation on that system
yet.
So when our groups officially merged recently and
cross-training was looking unavoidable, I worked with the leads on each of these
systems to configure a VPC development image. The nice thing with this is that
the system is correctly configured by someone that knows what they're doing. The
image is fully patched and includes Visual Studio, configured websites,
appropriate database client tools, virus scanning software, and source control
client software.
Now, moving a new developer onto a project is as
simple as installing VPC (about 5 minutes), copying the image (DVD / network
share / USB2 external hard drive), and starting it up. Of course, the developer
needs to check out the latest code from source control, but they just need to
pull down the deltas since the image was built.
I know this is old
news and elementary VPC usage for some developers. At Microsoft, for instance,
QA
tests on VPC's so they can give an image in the error state to the developer to
debug. However, it's saved our group so much time lately that I wanted to
share our success story. More VPC goodies and links to
follow.