Motivation

One of my friend asked me to help with a technical challenge. I was surprised with the way he had setup his machine with the tools needed for his development. Multiple tools for same purpose, multiple versions (really unnecessary minro versions) of the tools. Duplicates of git source code etc., I somehow managed to help made him happy first. Then asked these questions

Does everybody on your team has the same setup as you?
- No, it depends what other project they involved.
Do your company shared any instruction to organize tools, source code and project document so they can support?
- No
What if your hard disc corrupted, you need to set all these projects on new laptop?
- Oh, NO. It will take time. I can setup the projects as and when needed. There is centralized backup if we store files in certain directories.
What if I ask you to delete older version of tools (git, maven, java, eclipse) and have one as long as it supports your projects?
- I can try. But I will do it later.

This is not new experience for me, we have been there. It is just the mindset of I am good for now. No one concerned about me struggling with my cumbersome setup.

Since I started my career, I happend to work in organized project teams where we had common setup across all developers. Those helped while helping, code review and conducting workshop in Extream Programming (XP).

Here I am sharing how I setup my windows laptop to keep it ready to use and having state of worry free about crashing.

Backup

Different companies have different backup strategies for user laptop. Some of them backup all while others backup certain directories (Ex: Documents) or certain drives (Mostly they exclude OS).

Recommendation

Understand System and User environment variables.
Use commands so you can script and share it with others easily.
Use portable/extractable instead of GUI based nstallation when it is available/supported by the provider.

Organizing Directory Structure

/Users/<username>/Documents –> Any non source code
/Users/<username>/Git –> Top level directory for all projects from SCM. Keep the same directory structure as in your SCM (GitHub, GitLab). Example, If I checkout https://github.com/mookkiah/hop it will be under /Users/<username>/Git/mookkiah/hop
Place all tools, libraries, applications under one standard folder. Example /Users/<username>/Applications

Setup

winget

Many application can be installed using Windows Package Manager winget. This is a command-line tool.

winget is bundled with Windows 11 and modern versions of Windows 10 by default as the App Installer.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/winget/

Using winget command you can search for application in windows store. If you prefer web interface to search use https://winget.run/

VS Code

winget install -e --id Microsoft.VisualStudioCode

Git

winget install -e --id Git.Git

Oracle JDK

Requires Admin rights

winget install -e --id Oracle.JDK.17

Apache Directory Studio

winget install -e --id Apache.DirectoryStudio

NodeJS

winget install -e --id OpenJS.NodeJS

PostgreSQL

Requires Admin rights

winget install -e --id PostgreSQL.PostgreSQL

AWS CLI

winget install -e --id Amazon.SAM-CLI

Rancher Desktop

Requires Admin rights

winget install -e --id suse.RancherDesktop

Chef

winget install -e --id ChefSoftware.ChefDK

Keep updated

It is good practice to keep the tooling upgraded to get the security fixes and use the new features which improves efficiency over the period of time and keep you stay ahead of the game.

Exceptions

While standards good for most of the developers. There are experts who manages their computer by understanding underlying structure of projects tools they use with in the company. We welcome them to stay that way to innovate and contribute to the standard structure as and when they see solution to a complex procedure.

References

Installing JDK
Switching JDK version
Upgrading Git
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/winget/uninstall