MAMP/LAMP native or virtual (Virtualbox/VMware)?

Question

What is your preferred development environment ?

Native

• WAMP/MAMP/LAMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP) on Windows/MacOS/Linux
• Working copy local, SVN/CVS on server
• IDE/Editor on the same system (Eclipse, Aptana, Zend...)

Virtual/Native (Server on VM)

• LAMP on VirtualBox/VMware
• working copy in the VM
• IDE/Editor on host, access to the VM with Samba, FTP, SFTP (eventually mapping with tools like WebDrive)

Virtual (VM)

• Complete development environment running in a VM (server, tools, IDE)
• Host is only used for special tools not available on the OS running in the VM

All have pros and cons.

Answer 1

With BitNami stacks you can run the exact same XAMP environment locally or remotely (and make sure everybody on your team is running the exact same stack). It is free and works on Windows, Linux, Mac.

Answer 2

I like having the SVN repository somewhere on a web server.

It's reasonably secure (using Apache WebDAV), and it gives me a good chance of recovering quickly from any disasters that may befall my main development machine. I have the luxury of control over my own web server, but there are lots of cheap hosts that will do the job at low cost.

As regards VM or no VM:

Advantages of VM - very fast recovery from screwing up your development environment Ability to try out different versions or upgrades quickly If you have many systems running the VM host, ability to quickly move the whole environment Can choose any Host

Disadvantages of VM - performance impact; extra setup complexity.

On balance, I go for "no VM" if all the tools are available on my host system, but I do use VM when I need to run a different OS (the host system is a Mac Pro, so if I need Visual Studio, I do it with Parallels).