yawds

Yet another Windows development stack environment for unlucky Web developers

About

A modern, complete, portable and configurable Web development software stack environment for Windows

If you are a lucky developer, you should use FrontStack instead

Features

• Easy to use
• Fully portable
• Automatic packages provisioning
• Configurable for your specific project runtime scenario
• Complete software stack for modern Web development and testing
• OS dependencies checker
• Auto-configured based on your existent environment variables
• Great isolation from the OS
• Support for environment updates with keeping all the user stuff
• Support both 32 and 64 bits OS
• Support Windows XP/Server 2003 or greater
• Easy to use from continous integration servers and deployment environments

Installation

1. Download the latest version

2. Uncompress the zip wherever you want

3. Run start.cmd

4. Put your code in the workspace/ directory

5. Start coding!

Software stack

• Node.js
• Ruby
• PhantomJS
• SlimerJS
• CasperJS

Aditionally, the following tools binaries are also provided

• cURL
• Putty
• SFTP client
• 7zip
• Bash with *UNIX binaries (port to Win32)

See PACKAGES file for more information about versions

Packages

By default, the following packages will be installed in the provisioning process

• bower@latest
• yeoman@latest
• grunt-cli@latest
• compass@latest

You can configure it from the package.ini file

Custom packages

Aditionally, if you need to have custom packages that are not avalible from npm or gem, you should put it in packages/.

If your package has a bin/ directory, it will be automatically available from %PATH%

Aditionally, if your package need to define specific environment variables, you should simply create a file called _setenv.bat in the root folder of your package

Updates

You can easily uptade the whole software stack automatically when a new version is available

By default, yawds checks for new versions on each start, however you can do it manually running update.cmd

Note that the environment only will update stack/ directory. All the user configuration or packages installed will remain between updates

Use the isolated environment context

To use the isolated specific environment context variables from a continous integration server or for specific purposes, you should simply call from your batch the use_env.bat script, located in ~\stack\scripts\

Make it yours

If you are a devops guy or an architect, yawds allows you to provide and easily configure a development environment for the projects you happy owns

You can provide a pre-configured environment for a specific execution environment, for example, setting a pre-defined http proxy environment variable or custom packages installation according to your project packages dependencies

Create your custom environment

1. Clone/fork this repository

2. Download the latest version

3. Unzip it in environment\ overriding (or erase it, preferably) the directory contents

4. Customize environment.ini and packages.ini (both are commented in-line)

5. Run scripts\release.bat

You may customize VERSION and CHANGELOG files with you own project information

Configuration files

There are two configuration files you can adapt to your needs: environment.ini and packages.ini

Note that you should comment or remove the options you do not need

environment.ini

[general]
name = YAWDS development environment
shortname = YAWDS
prompt = [yawds %YAWDS_VERSION%] $P $_$G$S
console_color = 2

[requisites]
;; requires git must be installed in the system
git = true

[install]
;; display a custom welcome message on install process
message = Welcome to YAWDS development environment
;; set true if the user computer need to be authenticated 
;; to access to network resources, like source repositories
force_auth = false
;; set true if the user computer will be always behind a Web proxy
force_proxy = false

[install.ask]
;; ask the user about his network auth credentials
auth = false
auth_confirm = Do you want to enter your <company> credentials?
auth_username = Please, enter your <company>'s user credentials
;; ask the user about proxy auth credentials
proxy_auth = true
;; ask to configure git config (user, email and credentials storage)
git = true

[proxy]
;; from this section you can force set by default the web proxy 
;; configuration, avoiding to ask the user to enter it
http_proxy=http://proxy:3128
https_proxy=http://ssl.proxy:3128
no_proxy=.company,.google.com

[update]
enabled = true
check_url = https://raw.github.com/AdesisNetlife/yawds/master/environment/stack/VERSION
check_url_auth = false
check_on_startup = true

[scripts]
;; custom execution scripts, with relative path from stack/ directory
after_start=scripts\post_start.bat
after_install=scripts\post_install.bat

package.ini

Tell to yawds what should be instaled during the environment provisining process.

Example configuration file:

;; define the relative path for node or ruby packages installtion
;; you probably do not need to change this option
install_dir = packages

[provision]
;; enable/disable packages provisioning
enabled = true
;; this option allows to force to update Node/Ruby packages 
;; from latest versions on each environment start
keep_updated = false

[npm]
bower = latest
grunt-cli = latest
yo = latest

[gem]
compass = latest

You can aditionally create a provision.lock file in the stack\ directory if you want to permanently disable the provisioning or packages update process

Updating the software stack

yawds provides support for automatic software stack updates, checking new versions from a remote ini file accesible via HTTP. When a new version is available, yawds ask the user to process with the update

You should create a well-formed ini like a version manifest file, and make it available from a HTTP server

The file must be called VERSION and it must exists in the stack/ folder

Here is a complete file example with the supported values:

version = 0.1.0
download = http://downloads.mycompany.com/environment-latest.zip
release_notes_url = https://downloads.mycompany.com/environment-release-notes.txt
download_auth = false
post_update_script = scripts\post_update.bat

Only zip and 7z compression formats are supported

Possible troubles

Cannot find global installed packages

If you cannot use global installed packages, like grunt or bower, you must check if you have .npmrc in your user home directory (%USERPROFILE%) and then remove the prefix option.

This trouble seems to be related to npm, since it tries to resolve npmrc config files in common paths like user home directory. Yawds forces to define the userconfig config value on each environment start, which defines the npm user config path, however npm always looks in the user home and load this config.

You can't have cross-enviroment npm config options at this time, sorry! It was created the #4 issue about this trouble

Issues

If you experiment some issue, please feel free to open an Github issue reporting it

Note that yawds is still a beta version

To Do/Wish list

• Improve configuration documentation
• Read ini config instead of write and read environment variables from node scripts
• Self-contained Git?
• Support more packages pre-requisites (others SCM, specific binaries)
• Performs all the setup and configuration from node scripts
• Better isolation in batch script variables

Contributors

Tomás Aparicio

License

Copyright 2014 Adesis Netfile S.L and contributors

Released under MIT license