IDE running in Windows while source code is inside a VM for web development

2    23 Jul 2015 07:47 by u/no_censorship_bruh

It is s for web development so I only deal with the html, css, js/jq, and php.

Inside a VM, I'm running Ubuntu and LAMP for the web server. The source for the web is on var/www/html.

What I'm currently doing is powering on the VM with ubuntu on it and use Netbeans as the IDE to edit the code. All that is inside the VM so I'm constantly switching windows from web browser on the physical computer and the VM window where Netbeans is.

What are the alternatives for this?

Edit for clarity:

Ubuntu VM installed components:

  • LAMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP)
  • Netbeans IDE

Windows 7 Installed components:

  • VMware Workstation (where ubuntu VM is run from)
  • Web browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE)
  • All other applications I run while working

I want to move Netbeans to Windows so I can easily alt+tab from the IDE to the web browser/other applications.

It doesn't have to be still Netbeans. I will try other IDEs as long as it can edit the code which is inside the Ubuntu VM/over the network.

edit 2:

Haven't tried it yet, but I'll see if I can run samba off ubuntu and share /var/www/ with r/w permission.

Edit 3:

Finally able to test it. Using samba on ubuntu and sharing /var/www/ folder with windows mapping that location, i can make netbeans and other IDEs work with it.

9 comments

0 u/Genghis_Khan 23 Jul 2015 08:28

Netbeans and WAMP running natively Windows? Sorry if I misunderstand the question.

0 u/no_censorship_bruh [OP] 23 Jul 2015 08:32

No. Those are running on Ubuntu which is inside a VM.

0 u/Genghis_Khan 23 Jul 2015 14:32

Is there a reason you can't run the Apache/MySQL/PHP stack in Windows?

0 u/no_censorship_bruh [OP] 23 Jul 2015 17:18

So it's just a matter of copy/pasting the files to and from the production server and permissions be the same.

0 u/lerthe61 23 Jul 2015 08:44

You describe what you do, not what you want. What the problem with your approach?

Alternative? You can open browser window on your windows machine (this will reduce amount of switches between machines).

0 u/no_censorship_bruh [OP] 23 Jul 2015 09:00

I've edited the main post. Sorry for the confusion.

Text that I've added if you don't want to click the main post again.

Ubuntu VM installed components:

  • LAMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP)
  • Netbeans IDE

Windows 7 Installed components:

  • VMware Workstation (where ubuntu VM is run from)
  • Web browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE)
  • All other applications I run while working

I want to move Netbeans to Windows so I can easily alt+tab from the IDE to the web browser/other applications.

It doesn't have to be still Netbeans. I will try other IDEs as long as it can edit the code which is inside the Ubuntu VM/over the network.

0 u/lerthe61 23 Jul 2015 16:41

It seems very reasonable. I use different technology stack but the same approach:

  • virtual machine with linux to host my server;

  • windows machine with IDE and browser

I think you stuck with deployment step. Each time I press deploy inside my IDE it execute deployment script, which stop server on virtual machine, update files with most recent versions and start server again.

I can't help you with deploying through NetBeans, because I am dotNet guy.

0 u/Master_Foo 25 Jul 2015 06:29

Install SSH server on the Linux VM. Most IDEs have a way to edit files over SSH.

You might even be able to mount the SSH connection as a file system. Although it's been a long time since I've used windows and can't remember if this is a native feature, or if you need to install a program to do this. I think it is a native feature.

0 u/no_censorship_bruh [OP] 25 Jul 2015 07:50

I just used samba on ubuntu and restricted to only allow my host computer access. I would have tried SSH but this works nonetheless. Thanks for the info.