I am making progress on my xp / agile dev enviornment on a usb stick. This weekend I might have some more time to work towards it.
It's harder then you might think actually. As a .Net guy (and the fact that the game will be in C#) I've been trying to set up a freebie .Net tool chain.
Here at work currently I'm using subversion + apache + trac (well if it can hack replacing bugzilla + dokuwiki) + cruise control .net + iis + nunit + ncover + fxcop + nant + visual studio pro 2005.
All that was before the suits decided that perhaps they should see if we could afford Team Foundation Server. *sigh*. Anyway it works well for me and my team and I produce code of increasingly quality with the help of that toolset.
Condensing that down to something that can be taken around on a usb stick, and were possible avoid installation is challenging.
Asp .Net doesn't seem to like apache very much, I've not had much success about getting web applications working n apache. Cassini is good, but still requires an install to the Gac.
Thing is subversion doesn't seem to have much good support for IIS, at least without perl installed. One of my goals is to not have too much software installed on each machine - that you could take it with you. So far I think I can get that down to just Visual Studio Express 2005, Subversion and Tortoise SVN.
Perhaps I will let that goal slide a bit, and just expect more stuff to be installed on each machine you may want to develop on.
The main drive of this dev on a stick thing is because I thought it would be useful for us hobbists to be able to take something to work, university or school and do stuff at lunch - and use the same stuff at home.
I also think time management is key - and something I have to get better at myself anyway. So any approach I make should incorporate not only developer tools, but something to better organise time. If there's one thing I see time and again in forums and in life in general it's people who start things and don't finish them. I would like something that would enable me to finish my hobby stuff, as well as the professional development I do and have a balanced relationship with my wife, friends and family.
I could have spent more time on working on game dev and stuff this weekend - if I didn't go to my friends wedding for instance. Or didn't spend as much time with the wife. I guess it's about priorities, and where to snatch time from to actually achieve these other things.
Time flies huh?
Any youngesters still in highschool read this entry - yeah I know the social aspects can really suck at school but honestly, enjoy and cherish all that free time you might have [smile] I know a programmed more little games at school and the first year of college then I have done in the many years since.
