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This sounds awesome! That being said, there's not a chance in hell I'd install so much stuff onto my mac. IMO, Vagrant and VM's in general are what you should

This sounds awesome! That being said, there's not a chance in hell I'd install so much stuff onto my mac. IMO, Vagrant and VM's in general are what you should use to develop your web applications. (I happen to be opinionated about this :D ) Mainly this is because I believe in matching your production environment for development. It's also because I'm anal about installing memory-using apps into my little MBA. However, for things like Minecraft, onepassword, wget, sublime text 2 - this is really awesome.

patcon 14y ago
I share your opinion on vagrant, but it still stands that there are lots of tools you use on your host machine that you might want to make simple to share and configure organizationally. Look into how pivotal labs (consultancy) works and its a little mind-blowing and inspiring -- they all share the same configs and many of the same defaults and dotfiles and shortcuts (which they decide through deliberation and consensus), they reformat their macbooks from scratch between each project (for infosec), and they all know how to write chef recipes, so if they customize their system in a way that they want back after they wipe, then they write a recipe for it and share it back via pivotal_workstation :) It's pretty cool. And even if not everyone can put the time into building that sort of solution from scratch, pretty much everyone can ride their coattails
jonknee 14y ago
You're anal about install memory-using apps onto your MBA so instead of installing them you run them inside a VM? That uses quite a bit more memory. Boxen doesn't seem to care too much about what you want to install, so you could have it install Vagrant and VirtualBox for you.
- encoderer 14y ago
  > That uses quite a bit more memory. Not really. What it gives you is easily configurable, absolute control over memory usage. I can ensure that my local dev environment doesn't use more than 2GB of RAM. From one setting. In one place. In about 20 seconds flat.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    > What it gives you is easily configurable, absolute control over memory usage. Perhaps this speaks to OS X's rather wimpy, squishily configurable control over memory usage.
    - encoderer 14y ago
      You think? It's OSX's job to give me a way to say "Don't let the combination of Mysql, Apache and nginx use more than 1 GB ram" ? I disagree. That doesn't belong in a consumer OS.
      - stcredzero 14y ago
        > You think? It's OSX's job to give me a way Bzzzt! Jumped to conclusions & placed words in my mouth! Thanks for playing. BTW, I'm an iOS developer and I've been using OS X as almost my exclusive dev environment since 2003. Sorry, forgot that I have to keep quiet about shortcomings of OS X, or else. > I disagree. That doesn't belong in a consumer OS. I applaud your brave stance against the straw man you just conjured. [slow clap]
        encoderer 14y ago
        Wow. Just wow. Your winning combination of charm, wit and kindness must keep your social calendar very full. Enjoy the ride home on the short bus, man.
        stcredzero 14y ago
        > Enjoy the ride home on the short bus, man. Also, doesn't admit or apologize when he's shown to be wrong, and responds with cheap insults instead.
      - benatkin 14y ago
        It's a general purpose OS.
- jim-greer 14y ago
  I don't care much about the memory, but having my dev machine match production is great.
ebiester 14y ago
How do you develop on multiple monitors with your VMs? That's always kept me back.
- atlbeer 14y ago
  Vagrant is basically a headless box running on a local directory. On vagrant you have your production tool chain open in terminal (via ssh) where you can run a dev version of what you are building by forwarding ports to local host You then can run browsers, IDE consoles across as many monitors as you want *obviously web dev centric

patcon 14y ago

I share your opinion on vagrant, but it still stands that there are lots of tools you use on your host machine that you might want to make simple to share and configure organizationally. Look into how pivotal labs (consultancy) works and its a little mind-blowing and inspiring -- they all share the same configs and many of the same defaults and dotfiles and shortcuts (which they decide through deliberation and consensus), they reformat their macbooks from scratch between each project (for infosec), and they all know how to write chef recipes, so if they customize their system in a way that they want back after they wipe, then they write a recipe for it and share it back via pivotal_workstation :) It's pretty cool. And even if not everyone can put the time into building that sort of solution from scratch, pretty much everyone can ride their coattails

jonknee 14y ago

You're anal about install memory-using apps onto your MBA so instead of installing them you run them inside a VM? That uses quite a bit more memory. Boxen doesn't seem to care too much about what you want to install, so you could have it install Vagrant and VirtualBox for you.

encoderer 14y ago
> That uses quite a bit more memory. Not really. What it gives you is easily configurable, absolute control over memory usage. I can ensure that my local dev environment doesn't use more than 2GB of RAM. From one setting. In one place. In about 20 seconds flat.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > What it gives you is easily configurable, absolute control over memory usage. Perhaps this speaks to OS X's rather wimpy, squishily configurable control over memory usage.
  - encoderer 14y ago
    You think? It's OSX's job to give me a way to say "Don't let the combination of Mysql, Apache and nginx use more than 1 GB ram" ? I disagree. That doesn't belong in a consumer OS.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      > You think? It's OSX's job to give me a way Bzzzt! Jumped to conclusions & placed words in my mouth! Thanks for playing. BTW, I'm an iOS developer and I've been using OS X as almost my exclusive dev environment since 2003. Sorry, forgot that I have to keep quiet about shortcomings of OS X, or else. > I disagree. That doesn't belong in a consumer OS. I applaud your brave stance against the straw man you just conjured. [slow clap]
      - encoderer 14y ago
        Wow. Just wow. Your winning combination of charm, wit and kindness must keep your social calendar very full. Enjoy the ride home on the short bus, man.
        stcredzero 14y ago
        > Enjoy the ride home on the short bus, man. Also, doesn't admit or apologize when he's shown to be wrong, and responds with cheap insults instead.
    - benatkin 14y ago
      It's a general purpose OS.
jim-greer 14y ago
I don't care much about the memory, but having my dev machine match production is great.

ebiester 14y ago

How do you develop on multiple monitors with your VMs? That's always kept me back.

atlbeer 14y ago
Vagrant is basically a headless box running on a local directory. On vagrant you have your production tool chain open in terminal (via ssh) where you can run a dev version of what you are building by forwarding ports to local host You then can run browsers, IDE consoles across as many monitors as you want *obviously web dev centric