I recently moved my working environment from Windows 7 to Ubuntu, and enjoy this every minute of my working day. My work is currently to develop ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight applications. Thus, important Windows stuff is being still run in VirtualBox (such as IIS, MSSQL, Silverlight 3, and legacy COM stuff). For now, I use Visual Studio under VirtualBox as editor/IDE/debugger. But since I prefer Ubuntu fonts and UI much more I'd like to move at least editor (and better IDE) to native Ubuntu; I don't think I will go as crazy as trying to use Remote Debugging between Ubuntu/Windows.
Things I have already done:
- I store project files in my home folder and run Visual Studio from \vboxsvr share. With few tricks for ASP.NET it works.
- I use svn on Ubuntu.
- I test my ASP.NET MVC site using FireFox/FireBug on Ubuntu.
What I need on Ubuntu:
- SQL client to manage MSSQL. I mostly need querying, but I would miss SQL intellisense support.
- I enjoy command-line svn a lot, but there're times when it's not enough (e.g. view files / check diffs / selectively commit at the sames time) so I wonder if there're any addons - I don't mean replacement for svn, just addons for rare cases like above.
- I wonder if there're editors that can provide some C# intellisense. Yes I know about MonoDevelop, but will it provide intellisense without compiling (since I'm going to compile remotely in Win box)?
And pretty big topic, what's the best way (editor/IDE) to do "folder-based" development? What I mean:
- The project is /trunk. Everything is there. I don't want to manually add files to project or like that. The project is the folder and files down there.
- Main task is to edit files of course.
- I need a quick way to open / search for files in the project. Like in Resharper, I can click Ctrl-Shift-T (IIRC) and just type file name, a list of matching files in the project folder and below is shown. For example, gedit has file tree browser, but I can't quickly type XYZ to find all XYZ files there; moreover it doesn't automatically switch focus to/from editor; so it's more mouse-oriented; I need 100% keyboard way.
- I need syntax highlighting for C#/HTML/JS. Most importantly, I need HTML tags autocompletion. I can live without it, but I'll be sorry.
- I need to run compilation remotely (via ssh I think, invoking NAnt script which does MSBuild) and grab results such as errors and warnings, and I'd prefer to quickly go to error line/file.
- It should probably save files in Windows format - CRLF.
In short, I need to edit/search/open/svn/compile/run files in some folder. Looks like a case for command-line, but imaging I'm in /trunk and want to open file.cs inside /trunk/foo/bar/boo/far, I wouldn't want to type all this path even with bash autocompletion help. I'd prefer to enter :open file.cs, and maybe then select from list of file.cs and file1.cs.
Well, maybe I'll add more soon. Actually, I don't have exact requirements; for example, I don't even know if I need to ask for IDE or editor; or should it have svn support integrated or I need to use it from console; do people work with files from console (search/commit/delete/etc) and open editor from there, or they work from editor/IDE and manage files (search/commit/delete) from there? What's better?
And I don't need detailed requirements. "Use grep" or "I use bash aliases to open files by part of name" will do.
I have a feeling that vim might have everything I need. I'd like to confirm that, before I spend a lot of time learning it. No I don't want Emacs. Any other IDE? I like Eclipse, but is it good for such stuff?
And after all, do you feel like it's a good way to go? I enjoy Ubuntu, enjoy learning new stuff, and Ubuntu + Windows in VirtualBox actually runs faster than Windows7 on my mahcine, but maybe I need to keep development (editor/files management/etc) in Windows/VirtualBox only, leaving other stuff for Ubuntu?