HACKER Q&A
📣 arkmm

Multi-Machine Development Workflows?


I frequently switch between a laptop or a desktop while working on code - mostly just because I enjoy changing the scenery from my desk occasionally. My current cobbled-together approach is to have a git repo inside a Dropbox folder and try to keep virtual environments up to date between both machines, but it feels sub optimal.

Does anyone have any tips on how they manage maintaining development state across multiple machines?

  👤 jolmg Accepted Answer ✓
If you're fine with the laptop, is there any reason to use the desktop? Why not just keep it as a backup dev environment? That's what I do.

If you're an emacs user, you can put an emacs daemon somewhere accessible and connect emacs clients from both machines. This allows you to continue on your work when switching machines without even saving.

Vim doesn't have the same type of server functionality, but if you open up vim on a file that another vim process has opened, it'll ask you if you want to open it up in the same (maybe unsaved) state the original process has and so continue to work on it.

You can also work from tmux.

There's many ways to go about this depending on what you consider to be the "development state" you want to preserve (like, does it include the graphical windows and optionally their positions?), but the simplest for me still seems to be to avoid the whole issue and work almost exclusively on the laptop.

👤 jonpalmisc
Probably not the answer you’re looking for, but Windows Remote Desktop (if you’re on Windows) is REALLY good. If feels almost identical to using the remote computer directly, it’s snappy even on a mobile hotspot connection. If you’re not on Windows, I’m a fan of AnyDesk (no affiliation), and have had good experiences with it in the past.

Rather than deal with syncing environments, etc. why not just use the same one all the time and remote to your desktop when you want to use your laptop?