Initial dev environment suggestions

[dan596]

This sticky is sound advice and taking such I have read the entire user guide in preparation. However I still have questions about setting up my development environment that the guide didn't touch enough for me. Can the forum comment on the best way to set up a development environment given the following considerations:

1. I have 1 full license and two placeshifter licenses.
2. I don't want to effect the operation of my server in any way.
3. My customization ambitions will involve placeshifter communication.
4. I am an experienced java programmer.

Can I install a client instance using my current license and still run my server? Will I be able to work with placeshifter to the client install? If not, will SageTV offer a dev license for a dev server? Noticing a recent post about extending the StudioAPI anyone suggesting the best editor for the job?

[tmiranda]

Dan,

You can't use the "full license" on your server and a client at the same time. You need to buy a client license in addition to the full license you already have. I have not heard of Sage offering "developer licenses" but it sure would be a good idea.

You could use your server license to run Studio on the server. If you're running Sage as a service this will not effect the operation of the server. (Because in effect Studio will be running as a "client" connected to the "server" service.) Of course if you really mess something up while developing you may have to reboot the machine so strictly speaking this will violate your rule number 2.

Reagards,

Tom

[GKusnick]

I'm not clear on exactly what sort of customization you have in mind, but here are some rough guidelines:

For UI development and STV/STVI creation, your best bet is a separate computer runnning SageTV Client. This is a less expensive license than a full server license, and gives local access to Studio without perturbing your server. Java experience is largely irrelevant to this mode of development since you'll be doing the bulk of your work in Studio (although you can write helper functions in Java if you like). Once your STV or STVI is adequately debugged, you can deploy it to your server for use with Placeshifter clients.

For background tasks that are meant to run on the server and interact with remote clients (such as Placeshifter clients), you'll need a Java IDE and a server to test on. If you're adamant about not perturbing your production server, then you'll need to shell out for another full server license to run on your test server.

I don't follow your question about extending the StudioAPI. If you're asking for Java IDE recommendations, NetBeans is free and works reasonably well, although a lot of people seem to prefer Eclipse.

[phelme]

In the Studio docs under "Safe STV Editing" Sage recommends running Sage as a service (which I already do) and installing a separate (licensed) client for development. Do they mean on the same machine? I'd hate to mess up a production server by overlaying a client install on top of what's already there. Though from reading the threads here it sounds like everyone develops on a separate PC.

[gplasky]

Normally you'd want to develop on a seperate PC client so that you can make sure you don't change anything on your production server. Working with Studio on your sever modifies your production environment. The PC client is like the server without the service. The client is everything you need to run seperately from the server it is contained in the PC client. If you wacked out the client by some huge misfortune it won't affect your server.

Gerry

[phelme]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Normally you'd want to develop on a seperate PC client so that you can make sure you don't change anything on your production server. Working with Studio on your sever modifies your production environment. The PC client is like the server without the service. The client is everything you need to run seperately from the server it is contained in the PC client. If you wacked out the client by some huge misfortune it won't affect your server.

Cool. That jives with my understanding of it all. I already have a client license so I could develop on that separate PC, saving off any original prop files, directories etc. that are used when I connect to the production server.

What about if I want to mess with user records and the Sage db which needs a Wiz.bin? Will the stand alone client create its own?

[GKusnick]

Database modifications go to the real database on the connected server. Also if you're developing a complex plugin with both client-side and server-side components, at some point you'll need to deploy it to your server for testing.

If you want a totally sandboxed dev setup that's completely isolated from your production server, you'll need a second server license and a machine to set it up on. You'll also need to populate it with media and capture devices so you have some realistic data to test against.

Personally I don't feel the need to go to that extreme. Pure UI mods can be developed and tested entirely on the client side. In the rare case that I need to do a test deployment to the server, I make sure I have current backups and do my testing during off hours when nothing is recording and nobody is watching. If something goes wrong I can roll back to a good state fairly easily. This seems to be an adequate level of caution for my situation.

If bad data gets into the DB and I don't notice it for a while (long enough that I'd lose more by restoring an old backup), then I might have to resort to writing some code to iterate through the DB and clean it up. But that's happened maybe twice in the 5+ years that I've been developing SageTV plugins.

[phelme]

Thanks for all the advice!!