Developing in the cloud

Question

I wondering if anyone has tried a pure cloud based development setup, and if so how?

Background:

I'm going traveling for about six weeks in Costa Rica, my wife has already forbidden the laptop. I'm worried about being able to provide support to some of the projects I currently have going. While I won't have access to my laptop, I will have access to internet cafes, but the likely hood of being allowed to download source code, let alone install any of my normal development tools is doubtful. I will however have access to a web browser.

My initial thoughts through googling is getting a slice on slicehost. This way I would have a 'machine' complete with ajax console access.

Then using something like Bespin to act as a web based editor.

Combined with some Capistrano recipies and my github account. I think it just might work for my RAILS and PHP projects.

Anyone else tried something like this?

Any thoughst / opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

For $5 a month, you can get an account with GoToSSH, which is a web-based SSH client. If your web servers support SSH, you can use it to log in remotely and edit your files using vi/emacs/pico/whatever. Of course, this presumes you don't mind bypassing your source control for the sake of being able to quickly deploy fixes.

Answer 2

There are a few java applet ssh clients you could set up an a machine. I've used mindterm, but it's abandoned.

If the Internet cafe has Windows machines where you can install software, then you're all set. (not uncommon; I was usually able to install putty so I could check my email in Austria, Germany, and Italy on a 3-week trip in 2005.) WinSCP lets you run a text editor on remote files, which would otherwise be painful over a high-latency connection. Most version control systems have command line interfaces, so that should cover most of it.

I'm an old-school command line junkie, so I'm fine with ssh... Your needs may vary.

Just make sure your remote machine has a good UPS and will boot up ok after a power cycle. You'll be too far away to nudge it along if you haven't tested rebooting since last time you changed any config files.