Make Your Development Environment Ready While You Drink a Coffee

4 min readOct 19, 2016

Introduction

As a contractor — software developer, I remaster my work environment often, depending on project requirements. Depending on NDA, sometimes I work remotely on provided boxes. It is important for me to get a typical set of work tools quickly. Let me share how I get my new environment done while I am drinking coffee.

Important: This tip was tested for workplaces based on ubuntu 14.04 LTS or 16.04 LTS only.

Background

This tip demonstrates an approach for unattended environment configuration with ansible. Why ansible? It has no dependencies except python, which by default is installed on the box. List of available software recipes:

Databases

MySQL MySQL Community database server
MongoDB Popular NoSQL database

Database Tools

DBeawer Great GUI tool to work with MySQL, Postgres and bunch or another DBs
Robomongo Awesome free gui client for MongoDB
Common schema DBA’s framework for MySQL

Development

[Python] Includes most recent packet manager — pip installation and update
[Java] Installs java runtime environment 6,7, or 8 on the box
[NodeJS] Installs nodeJS 0.10 or 0.12 with set of most popular tools, including grunt, gulp, bower, npm
[PHP] Installs PHP for apache or nginx as Fast-CGI

Documentation Tools

Tools to ensure your project documentation does not get lost

Apiary Markdown based grammar do describe your REST API
Aglio Custom renderer for apiary based syntax for REST API — zero dependency on apiary itself
PlantUML — Plain text grammar to describe project UML diagrams
Bizagi modeler Bizagi modeler — BMPN2.0 compatible tool for drawing business flow diagrams (Windows only)
Gliffy html5 based online diagramming tool with BMPN 2.0 support

Virtualization

Docker Necessary docker components to build and run docker containers locally
Oracle Virtual Box Free virtualization environment for Linux
Vagrant Create and configure lightweight, reproducible, and portable development environments
ESXi client tools When I work under ESXi — provides better experience

Webservers

Apache Classic WebServer (recipe supports both prefork and worker models)
Nginx Compact effective webserver for highload

Workplace Handy Tools

Midnight Commander visual folder structure browsing
Git-Flow Git-Flow — +- successful git branching model
open in terminal action “open in terminal” for Nautilus
unzip unzip
p7zip p7zip
terminator terminator
sublime sublime text 2
atom github’s atom editor
zeal Zeal offline documentation browser
chrome Google chrome stable
d.pr Cross platform online screenshot capture client
Shutter Unix only screenshot capture
PHPStorm Jetbrains IDE for PHP
PyCharm Jetbrains IDE for Python
Rubymine Jetbrains IDE for Ruby
Idea Jetbrains IDE for Java

Collaboration

HipChat Crossplatform atlassian HipChat
Slack Crossplatform slack client
Speak.io custom video/screen/sound communication for teams. Free unlimited trial period.
Teamviewer Most known tool for screen sharing and remote control
Appear.in Client-less online multiplatform WebRTC collaboration tool with screen sharing support

Using the Code

Installation as simple, as:

get your brand new ubuntu 14.04 LTS or 16.04 LTS
install git, curl: sudo apt-get install curl git
clone repository: git clone git@github.com:Voronenko/ansible-developer_recipes.git
copy local.yml.template to local.yml
uncomment portions of software you want to install + adjust variables if needed
run bootstrap.sh to install ansible, and temporary make you sudoer w/o password
run local.sh to provision your box.

Bundled recipes:

#     - include: tasks_cleanupubuntu.yml                   # removes games, lens, etc
#     - include: tasks_python.yml                          # basic updates to py & pip
#     - include: tasks_worktools.yml                       # swiss knife for desktop utilities#     - include: tasks_mongodb_3.yml                       # mongodb 3.0
#     - include: tasks_mysql.yml                           # MYSQL 5.5
#     - include: tasks_percona_toolkit.yml                 # percona tools for mysql
#     - include: tasks_nginx.yml                           # nginx
#     - include: tasks_apache.yml                          # apache prefork|worker#     - include: tasks_nodejs.yml                          # node 0.10.* 0.12.*
#     - include: tasks_java.yml                            # java 6-7-8
#     - include: tasks_php_apache.yml                      # php 5.5 for apache#     - include: tasks_jetbrains_phpstorm.yml              # PHP IDE
#     - include: tasks_jetbrains_pycharm_community.yml     # PY IDE
#     - include: tasks_jetbrains_rubymine.yml              # RUBY IDE
#     - include: tasks_jetbrains_intellij_community.yml    # JAVA IDE#     - include: tasks_robomongo.yml                       # mongo GUI tool
#     - include: tasks_dbeawer.yml                         # mysql | postgre GUI tool#     - include: tasks_docker.yml                          # docker#     - include: tasks_oracle_virtualbox.yml               # Oracle Virtual Box
#     - include: tasks_vagrant.yml                         # Vagrant
#     - include: tools/tasks_expect.yml                    # expect tool
#     - include: tools/tasks_plantuml.yml                  # plant uml
#     - include: tools/tasks_toggle.yml                    # toggle time tracker
#     - include: tools/tasks_dpr.yml                       # d.pr screenshoting tool#     VMWARE
#     - include: vmware/tasks_vmware_tools.yml             # ESX vmware tools#    DEVELOPMENT
#     - include: tools/tasks_mailhog.yml                    # Web and API based SMTP testing

Optional recipes for local or vagrant based LAMP debugging:

# - include: "{{root_dir}}/vagrant/tasks_vagrant_php_webgrind.yml"         # Webgrind
# - include: "{{root_dir}}/vagrant/tasks_vagrant_phpmyadmin.yml"           # PhpMyAdmin
# - include: "{{root_dir}}/vagrant/tasks_vagrant_php_xdebug.yml"           # XDebug extension# db import script, python venv init scripts
# - include: "{{root_dir}}/vagrant/tasks_vagrant_write_tools.yml"  # - include: "{{root_dir}}/vagrant/tasks_vagrant_import_mysqldb_databag.yml"  
# (re)imports databases from db folder# - include: "{{root_dir}}/vagrant/tasks_vagrant_apache2_devsites.yml" 
# register apache websites on vagrant

Software versions:

apps_dir: "/home/YOURUSER/apps"
mysql_root_user: root
mysql_root_password: devroot
apache_mode: worker # use prefork or worker variables
dbeawer_version: 3.4.5
intellij_version: 14.1.4
java_version: 8
mailhog_version: 0.1.6
mongo_version: 3
nodejs_version: "0.12" # 0.10 0.12
oracle_vbox_version: 4.3
phpstorm_version: 10.0 # | 9.0.2 | 8.0.3 | 8.0.1 | 7.1.4 | 6.0.3 | 5.0.4
php_xdebug_version: 2.2.4
pycharm_version: 4.5.4
robomongo_version: 0.8.5
rubymine_version: 7.1.4
vagrant_version: 1.7.4php_family: default # 5.4 | 5.5 | 5.6 | default
hypervisor: esx

If you want to apply similar set of recipes for virtual machine — you might be interested in taking a look at this example: https://github.com/voronenko/lamp-box and https://github.com/Voronenko/ansible-developer_recipes for standalone deploy.

Points of Interest

Looking for forks, pull requests. Some similar projects that will allow to configure Mac box in a similar way. Hope this way of developer box configuration will be useful for you.