Development Machines

The development hardware has to address two issues: the functionality of the code — running on any machine — and the interaction of the different machines on the live site.

The development of the code — by one or several programmers — will benefit enormously from using a version control system like CVS (see http://www.cvshome.org/). CVS allows you to download files from the archive, work on them, and upload them again. The changes are logged and a note is broadcast to everyone else in the project.[1] At any time you can go back to any earlier version of a file. You can also create “branches” — temporary diversions from the main development that run in parallel.

CVS can operate through a secure shell so that developers can share code securely over the Internet. We used it to control the writing of this edition of this book. It is also used to manage the development of Apache itself, and, in fact, most free software.

The network of development machines needs to resemble the network of live machines so that load balancing and other intersystem activities can be verified. It is possible to simulate multiple machines by running multiple services on one machine. However, this can miss accidental dependences that arise, so it is not a good idea for the beta test stage.

[1] Notes can be broadcast if you’ve added scripts to do it — these are widely available, though they don’t come with CVS itself.

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