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it was an either/or statement.., if you don't have a remote devbox your choice is either having to deal with the fact that your home work environment is differe

it was an either/or statement.., if you don't have a remote devbox your choice is either having to deal with the fact that your home work environment is different from your work environment at the office and you have to set up lots of things twice and encounter some weird issues even if you try to keep them in sync (more problematic for less experienced devs in fast moving companies), or your choice is using a laptop and carrying it with you even if you do have a more powerful PC at home, have the option of having a more powerful desktop at work and would otherwise prefer desktops to laptops...

stephenr 3y ago
Automated reproducible VMs are pretty straight forward with vagrant, and "setup the same thing from a defined set of instructions" is basically the definition of docker. But if you're not happy with that scenario - I don't know maybe your work will be drastically affected if you have two different but identical VMs - tb3/4 external ssds are perfect for storing VMs on, so that you can move between machines at the drop of a hat. I've been doing this for about 5 years as a safety valve to my desktop having a fault: I can just unplug the drive and plug it into the laptop or a new machine and the VMs are all there exactly as I left them.
- black3r 3y ago
  Doing a reproducible build with Vagrant and Docker is possible but very far from straight forward as you have to make extra sure that you use the exact same source box/image and install every software in the exact same version and deal with updates manually (and while most of the time updates don't break stuff anymore, it still happens at least once a year) + you still have to deal with synchronizing your IDE settings, secrets & credentials which you don't want baked into a Docker image, ... again yes it's possible, but not as straightforward as working in the exact same environment... the VM on an external SSD is a better solution, but then it's still something you have to carry with you even though it's more compact than a laptop...
pushtheenvelope 3y ago
blackr, if you'd allow a small plug: we develop https://jetpack.io/devbox https://jetpack.io/devbox for this very scenario. Devbox will give you the same project environment (packages, env-vars) on your work and home laptop. It leverages nix, and uses your native file-system avoiding the overhead and complexity of using Docker.

stephenr 3y ago

Automated reproducible VMs are pretty straight forward with vagrant, and "setup the same thing from a defined set of instructions" is basically the definition of docker. But if you're not happy with that scenario - I don't know maybe your work will be drastically affected if you have two different but identical VMs - tb3/4 external ssds are perfect for storing VMs on, so that you can move between machines at the drop of a hat. I've been doing this for about 5 years as a safety valve to my desktop having a fault: I can just unplug the drive and plug it into the laptop or a new machine and the VMs are all there exactly as I left them.

black3r 3y ago
Doing a reproducible build with Vagrant and Docker is possible but very far from straight forward as you have to make extra sure that you use the exact same source box/image and install every software in the exact same version and deal with updates manually (and while most of the time updates don't break stuff anymore, it still happens at least once a year) + you still have to deal with synchronizing your IDE settings, secrets & credentials which you don't want baked into a Docker image, ... again yes it's possible, but not as straightforward as working in the exact same environment... the VM on an external SSD is a better solution, but then it's still something you have to carry with you even though it's more compact than a laptop...

pushtheenvelope 3y ago

blackr, if you'd allow a small plug: we develop https://jetpack.io/devbox https://jetpack.io/devbox for this very scenario. Devbox will give you the same project environment (packages, env-vars) on your work and home laptop. It leverages nix, and uses your native file-system avoiding the overhead and complexity of using Docker.