Virtual Development Environment

One of the things that makes Delphi such a powerful (in my opinion) development environment, is its component framework.  Where this technology really pays off is not so much in the initial out-of-the-box component set that comes with Delphi (though that is nice); it's in how easily it can be added to, via customizing/inheritance, from-scratch creation, or the purchase of third-party components.

Over time, this can get built up into quite an "arsenal" -- because it's code designed for re-use that actually gets re-used. ; )   Instead of coding everything from scratch, you get to focus on the unique attributes of the application you are developing, using and extending your component library along the way, which then puts more tools into your always-there toolchest... a virtuous circle with wonderful momentum.  (I say "always-there toolchest," btw, because one thing I've observed in many other environments is how often intended-for-re-use code lies dormant in in some repository somewhere). 

The downside of all this, though, is that re-installing a built-over-years component library into Delphi's IDE can take a huge amount of time.  It's literally not unlike having to do a full, manual format-and-reinstall of your day-to-day Windows PC, with lots of little details and nits that can get in the way. 

The other downside of the component library is that if you don't know what your doing, it's pretty easy to break things if you are installing new component packages that are finicky about installations sequences, or search paths, or whatever.

SO, those two things in mind...  a little over a year ago, when I bought a new laptop and made it my primary dev box (I like being able to code anywhere), I decided to try out setting up a virtual "development box" in VMWare, that would just be for development work -- no other installs polluting the mix over time.

It's worked out great, and my little digital dev environs have stayed quite clean over the past year.  No regrets. 

The beauty of it, though, was when I did a full wipe/restore on the whole laptop a few weeks ago (sped up considerably via Ghost).  My entire "development computer" had been copied off as a single file to an external USB drive prior to the format/restore, and once I had my laptop's OS and VMWare up and going, all I had to do was copy that virtual machine file over, and I was back in business.  Worked like a charm...

I have a feeling this "virtual develolpment environment" is going to be a semi-permanent thing.  : )

 

Comments

[ipbsadmin]

I've been doing the same kind of things with virtual development environments and enjoyed reading your post. It really is a great thing to not only be able to seclude environments, but also make them completely portable. In my last corporate job I used VMWare for our dev and test servers in place of buying 4 EXPENSIVE hardware based servers and it worked out great.

[dav]

I took this one farther,
I had a development
environment with a CVS vm
on the side to hold the code.
unfortunately I'm not doing the programming I used to do
so I don't get to use it
much...