Out with the old, in with the new — Switching from built-in software to one awesome piece of engineering: Local (by Flywheel)

A multitude of recent developments have aided me to make a choice. Some of them are

  • Apple going for thinner, lighter instead of stronger performance, and
  • Microsoft integrating Bash into Windows 10 with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)

While the new Macbook Pro is quite a feet of engineering, it is hardly Pro”. Surely intel graphics are enough for typing letters and calculating spreadsheets, it’s not Pro. A 16GB memory limit (which with the compression tech used is like 24GB for any other OS) is great for battery life, but it’s not “Pro”. The keyboard is ultra thin and has good tactile feedback, but the keys need a firm press, and travel almost nothing. Great for thinning the device, but again, not “Pro”. For the same amount of money you can buy a portable powerhouse like the Asus ROG G752vy (seen in my post about this). This one has other issues, but at least it has got awesome graphics (nVidia 980), max 64 GB RAM and a “normal” laptop keyboard.

(Yeah, I know, I KNOW, I don’t need ‘awesome graphics’ for web development, but I like to game also, and to be honest; my favorite IDE – phpStorm – DOES prefer a sturdy GPU. Don’t know why, but it runs so much better on a discrete GPU than it does on intel Graphics)

Reasons to stay with macOS are rapidly diminishing, and reasons to start using Windows again are gaining support. Since the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Windows offers Bash and all goodness that comes with Ubuntu linux, right at your fingertips. Well, not ALL goodness, but most of it.

Continue reading “Out with the old, in with the new — Switching from built-in software to one awesome piece of engineering: Local (by Flywheel)”

Another Upgrade, Another Fixing session – Upgrade Development Environment – Yosemite edition

While Redmond is starting their photocopiers (the age old story of how Microsoft keeps copying instead of innovating), we Mac users start our updates. OSX 10.10 Yosemite brings Apache 2.4 and PHP 5.5 to our playground, but not everyone is happy with that. Also, not all software survives the upgrade. Here is what I had to do to fix my development environment.

Continue reading “Another Upgrade, Another Fixing session – Upgrade Development Environment – Yosemite edition”

(Semi-)Automatically rebuild Apache VHOST configuration (Handy Shell Scripts – part III – rba.sh)

Now that we have a Development Webserver, we may have a local DNS server running to use a local TLD on the localhost and we have SSL added to our setup, we have discarded VirtualHostX , there is one thing that needs manual labor; and we hate that! (don’t we?). Maintaining the Apache2 Virtual-Host Configuration file and – in case of a DNS-less setup – the hosts file. Now, we do this automated! (Read on!)

Continue reading “(Semi-)Automatically rebuild Apache VHOST configuration (Handy Shell Scripts – part III – rba.sh)”

The “Ultimate” Guide to a Development Webserver on OSX

Hi all. It’s been a while since I posted something interesting, sorry ’bout that. For now I can make setting up a new web server, or upgrading it after an OSX upgrade, a bit easier. A colleague of mine tried it and ran into some problems concerning the different steps to take, so this post should help you get it done with more ease.

Continue reading “The “Ultimate” Guide to a Development Webserver on OSX”

SSL (HTTPS) on your Development WebServer

It took me a while and finally found a working, but a bit ugly, solution. Not to bore you with the details, here are the step by step instruction on how to get HTTPS working on your development web server. Please note, this is not a good setup for live web servers, you will have to take security into account if you use this on a publicly available web server. Continue reading “SSL (HTTPS) on your Development WebServer”

Confidental Infomation
stop spam mail