Ask HN: How do you work efficiently on remote servers?

Re:Ask HN: How do you work efficiently on remote servers? by stewartbutler on Friday March 27, 2015 @09:50AM (#9276217)

I use ssh + tmux + emacs. Security policy states no local copies of development files are allowed at my workplace without special authorization, which I never bothered asking for.

Migrated my emacs configuration to the remote server as a git repository, along with any programs that aren't available (e.g. git, which I use for unofficial code; official code is managed via perforce). Use GNU stow to move those configurations and binaries to the right places. If I need to move non-confidential information around I collect it in an emacs buffer and then use M-x compose-mail to send it out. The home directory is an NFS mount so I can also mount my home directory and exchange files that way. Etc, etc.

I also set up a lightweight Arch virtualbox VM that I SSH out of, because I really don't like the available Windows terminal applications, and every so often I need a local Unix box for some random reason.

A lot of my coworkers use Sublime and remote file editing, but I work faster when using Emacs (comint-mode is a godsend). We mainly work in Perl, Javascript, and HTML so none of the bigger IDEs are really appropriate.

Edit Since people seem more interested in the Sublime workflow, I asked for a few more details. Coworker replied: "Sublime SFTP [...] you might want to mention that the only advantage to SFTP over remote mounting the server is the save time, as with SFTP, you save local and push in the background, meaning frequent saves don't constantly stall workflows. Otherwise, there is no real advantage over just mounting directly." It is worth noting that he is working on a Mac, which has some severe bugs [1] when it comes to NFS mounts, and Samba has some latency issues in this instance.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=nfs%20slow%20mac

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Re:Ask HN: How do you work efficiently on remote servers? by gknoy on Friday March 27, 2015 @01:00PM (#9277518)

  [N]o local copies of development files are allowed
  ... without special authorization

I'm curious what kind of employer would hire programmers, and they tell them they couldn't develop locally as a matter of _security policy_, rather than "it won't fit on your machine". That seems like it would be very constraining.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you work efficiently on remote servers? by jlgaddis on Friday March 27, 2015 @01:59PM (#9277960)

That's not so uncommon in the corporate world, especially with people using laptops more and more as their daily driver and the potential for those laptops to be lost/stolen.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you work efficiently on remote servers? by tonyarkles on Friday March 27, 2015 @03:19PM (#9278465)

That's my usual workflow too (ssh + tmux + emacs), although occasionally emacs tramp-mode makes an appearance. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode

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Re:Ask HN: How do you work efficiently on remote servers? by filsmick on Friday March 27, 2015 @09:52AM (#9276229)

Thanks for answer. I'd love to learn about what solution your Sublime coworkers use, as most people here use emacs / vim and I'm most proficient with Sublime.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you work efficiently on remote servers? by joeyspn on Friday March 27, 2015 @10:08AM (#9276330)

Probably they're using the "Sublime SFTP plugin" by wbond... I usually use nano on the remote server and sublime remotely via ssh with this plugin. But to be honest it is just for small tasks. 95% of the time we work in local servers with Vagrant/Docker (shared folder --> git push), since our deployments aren't that big.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you work efficiently on remote servers? by filsmick on Friday March 27, 2015 @10:35AM (#9276502)

I tried it, but I can't get used to navigating the filesystem with the command palette. It just looks weird IMO.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you work efficiently on remote servers? by stewartbutler on Friday March 27, 2015 @10:28AM (#9276449)

Yep, Sublime SFTP.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you work efficiently on remote servers? by spoiler on Friday March 27, 2015 @10:03AM (#9276302)

I use a patchy python script (pyhon isn't my first language) to accomplish it. It basically just rsyncs the file once it's saved (using `on_post_save`). It's a bit tedious because I need to manually add folders it's going to watch, Also, it's not exactly remote code editing, since there's a local copy of the file (which is downloaded/uploaded). I believe most Sublime users do something similar to this, however I hope I'm wrong and I'd love to hear about an alternate approach!

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