Web Development in the Cloud
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4455539
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10-10-2019 - |
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I was fortunate enough to try out the Google Cr-48 for the Chrome OS trial period. Ideally, Google wants testers to use it as their primary computer -- in my case, primary usage would be for web development. However I find it difficult to fulfill that role on a completely browser-based environment.
My requirements are very basic (Basic editor/SFTP), but without a desktop IDE or even a notepad equivalent its considerably difficult to accomplish anything in Chrome OS in terms of web development. Additionally, disk space and file management is incredibly limited in Chrome OS at this time, so even downloading site files on a temporary basis would not be very practical.
One idea would be to write a web-based IDE that performs SFTP on the server-side to fetch remote documents, edit in the browser, and have the server FTP it back on save.
Ideas?
Solution
Cloud9 IDE is an in-the-cloud IDE with a server based on node.js (the server is GPL and Ajax.org has some other interesting stuff coming up). The editor itself is called "ACE" and we (Mozilla devtools) are in the process of merging Bespin with ACE to make Skywriter 1.0.
Short summary: Mozilla Skywriter is for people wanting to embed an editor in their web applications. Cloud9 IDE builds on the same editor to provide a complete coding-in-the-cloud solution.
(ObDisclaimer: I'm the manager of Mozilla devtools and have been involved with Bespin/Skywriter since before the project was publicly announced, so I have my biases :)
OTHER TIPS
There is actually enough free disk space in the Cr-48 root partition to install Vim. I documented the steps I used to do that. Of course, you can also install nano or any other text-mode editor the same way, as long as disk space requirements are not too high.
The stock Cr-48 setup already has sftp.
If you download the files you're working on to the stateful partition, you have over 9GB of room to work in there.
Action.IO is another great cloud development solution for a Chromebook. They have multi-region support (US-East, US-West, Europe, SE Asia, Australia), so the application is really fast and the experience feels as though you're working locally.
There's a full functioning linux shell in the WebIDE, and they support a number of standard web application templates (Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, Node.js, and Go).
(Disclaimer: I helped build and co-founded Action.IO)
How about Mozilla Labs Skywriter/Bespin?
My only idea would be to set up something like Ajaxterm on your web server and ssh into your web server to do web development. Some people like GUI-based text editors, but others use nothing but command-line editors (VI or Emacs, for example).
There are a few sites that offer the sort of features you're after, here are a couple:
This one might help it's an online PHP IDE:
There's also http://www.net2ftp.com/ for basic FTP & html editing.
Although it was an old post, there is more advanced cloud development environment at koding. The best part of koding is, it gives real VM for free! And also has social activity feed to ask share experience.
