My WinXP setup: Making myself more productive, one additional tool at a time.

Posted : May 2, 2004 at 1:09 am [America/Los_Angeles]

I run a Lab where I work. Heck, come to think of it, I have always been associated with some kind of an IT Lab (either working in it or managing it) ever since I got my first “real” hourly job during my student years at Arizona State. And that was almost 8 years ago!

Anyway, here’s my list of tools, softwares and services that I use on my WinXP workstation. I have listed a few lines explaining the reason of using the software:

Drive and Folders:
D:\ [Not the C: drive which I reserve purely for all WinXP crap].
All my content in D:\ drive goes in these 3 top-level folders:
  1. D:\development-root [holds my code and tools, api and softwares like Tomcat etc.]

  2. D:\document-root [holds my documents]
  3. D:\temp [my downloads and any temp file that I want to play with]

Development Tools:

  1. J2SDK 1.4.2_04 [Java development Kit]

  2. Java APIs [Too many to list. Maybe some other day]
  3. Apache Ant 1.6.1 [Ant Build tool]
  4. Eclipse 3.0 M8 [Java IDE: Coding is a pleasure - well sort of..] with the following plugins:
    • XMLBuddy [If you ever wanted to play with any XML file which is almost a given in these days of ‘XML Hell’ in Java Enterprise world]

    • Colorer [Syntax coloring of just about every language under the Sun]
    • CSSEditor [Wish Top Style Pro was ported as an Eclipse plugin ]
    • Fatborn KeyBindings (It spits out all the Key Bindings; basically a onetime plugin - install it, save the key bindings and dump it)
    • Spring Framework UI (Check out the latest avataar with cool GUI representation)
    • Easy Explorer (Accessing Windows Explorer from within Eclispe)
    • MyEclipse 3.7.2 (JSP Editor - I prefer stopping/starting Tomcat manually (via shortcuts on the “Quick Launch” toolbar and I deploy code using Ant. So, I don’t really use the other features that much)
  5. MySQL Administrator 1.0.3-alpha [Administering MySQL servers]
  6. MySQL client (part of MySQL install) [Running SQL against MySQL DB from command-line]
  7. MySQL Control Center [MySQL SQL IDE.]
  8. TOAD (Quest Software) for MySQL [MySQL SQL IDE. Trail license for 60 days. I think this software has great potential, but is currently too flaky.]
  9. Oracle 9.2 Client installation (including SQL Plus) [Running SQL against Oracle DB from command-line]
  10. TOAD (Quest Software) for Oracle (7.6) [Oracle SQL IDE. Not a freeware]
  11. Photoshop 7.x [Working with Images. Not a freeware. Anyone knows of a decent open-source alternative?]
  12. TopStyle 3 Pro [Working with CSS Files. Not a freeware]
  13. Secure Shell (SSH and SFTP) [Terminal access to remote servers; Secure File transfers. Commercial and hence only on my office machines]
  14. PuTTY SSH Client and WinSCP SCP/SFTP client [Open-source alternatives]

Services

  1. Tomcat 4.1.30/5.0.19 [Partial J2EE Stack for local development]

  2. MySQL 4.0.18 [MySQL relational database for local development]

Scripting Languages

  1. Perl 5.8.3, Python 2.3.3 [For getting things done/automating one-time tasks, simple web apps quickly]

  2. Groovy 1.0 beta 4 [If you luv Java too much and would like to write scripts in Java]

General Productivity

  1. Mozilla Firefox [browser of choice, ActiveX free] with the following plugins:
    1. Acrobat Reader plugin
    2. Java plugin
    3. Flash plugin
    4. Quicktime plugin
  2. Mozilla Thunderbird [IMAP email client of choice]
  3. SharpReader [RSS Reader of choice; there is only so much you can learn by surfing using a browser]
  4. TextPad [Notepad on steroids, extremely powerful search and replace features]
  5. 7-Zip 3.13 [If you wanted to deal with gzipped files etc. on a Windows box]
  6. Unix utilities [All unix commands available coming to a DOS shell near you..;-) I still need to graduate to Cygwin]
  7. WinCVS 1.3b16 [CVS client] or TortoiseCVS 1.6.6 [CVS client on steroids. Very very nice tool]
  8. WinMerge 2.0.2 [If you ever wanted to find the difference between two files]
  9. Microsoft Visio [This one is really useful for an IT professional. If you want to represent anything visually. Not a freeware]
  10. Microsoft Excel [This one is Microsoft’s killer app, from a business user standpoint. Even as a developer, I find interesting uses of this tool. Not a freeware]
  11. Microsoft Powerpoint [As long as Windows will be the desktop O/S of choice, you will need to know this tool. Even small amounts of knowing this tool will help. Not a freeware]
  12. Microsoft Word [Need I say more. Not a freeware]
  13. XP PowerToys [Open CMD Window here option when you right-click a folder in the Explorer View. A life saver.]
  14. w.bloggar [for Blogging, as a matter of fact I am typing this up in this tool ]

System/Network/Security Tools

  1. Process Explorer [Task Manager on steroids. Very helpful in killing those pesky processes that do not doe using Task Manager]

  2. ViewTCP [to watch your network traffic]
  3. ZoneLab [to control what goes out and comes in]
  4. Norton’s AntiVirus [Need I say more]

Personal Communication Tools

  1. Yahoo and Windows Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) [Could not get anything done without my buddy list..]

  2. Skype [Voice calls over the Internet. If you’re a broadband user and your folks or relatives have Internet connection and you DON’T use this software, well, just try it. You will be blown away. I guarantee it.

If you are thinking “How could he say he is productive if he does not use blah-blah-blah..”, please shoot me a line. Your efforts will be much appreciated.

- Anand

Category: Systems |

Viewed: 5861 times

19 Comments »

Hey, this is a great list.

One thing you might want to do is the reduced plugin trick for Acrobat. You more or less get rid of all the plugins except for three of them and it will load in about 2 seconds instead of 10.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 2, 2004 @ 6:37 am

Ok, I apologize my anonymous friend, but I am not sure what you mean. Are you talking about Firefox plugins. If so, which three you’re talking about?

Posted by: Anand Sharma at May 2, 2004 @ 8:11 am

I’m not the anonymous, but I think he/she speaks about Adobe Reader Speedup (http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/prods/misc/index.php).

Posted by: Damien Bonvillain at May 2, 2004 @ 11:17 pm

Ah..Thanks for the clarification.

I knew you were not anonymous, but just had no other way to address the he/she in question..;-)

Posted by: Anand Sharma at May 3, 2004 @ 10:39 am

Try using gaim, the open source messaging client, which supports Yahoo!, MSN messenger, AIM, Jabber, IRC, and a few others, all in one client program.

Posted by: Alan Oleski at June 25, 2004 @ 2:13 pm

Thanks Alan. I have a colleague at work who has been asking me to try Trillian out for some time now. I guess I’ve been somewhat lazy about it primarily because I really only use Yahoo IM.

In any case, thanks for the tip..:-)

- Anand

Posted by: Anand Sharma at June 25, 2004 @ 4:00 pm

Hi there,
I am familiar with all your development environment, MyEclipse, J2EE, JSP Editors…

But particulary one thing i am interesed in is CVS plugged into MyEclipse environment so that the i dont have to use a 3rd party tool like Visual Source Safe or SourceOffsite Collab Client(SOS).

Here is the situation: All the code is on the linux server, what we do is using SOS we check out the code and make some changes using eclipse environment and then check in after some changes.

What i want to do is plug in the CVS into MyEclipse so that i dont have to use any third pary environment.

Please let me know if you know about it.
Thanks
Ankit.

Posted by: Ankit Shah at August 31, 2004 @ 12:56 pm

Ankit:

CVS capabilities are part of Eclipse by default. So, I am not sure I understand when you say “..What i want to do is plug in the CVS into MyEclipse so that i dont have to use any third pary environment…”

Are you talking about plugging CVS “server” into MyEclipse? The way I do my coding is kinda like what you described:

Setup a CVS server on a box (other than my WinXP Development Workstation) and do check-in/check-out using the CVS client capabilities that are nicely embedded into Eclipse. I guess if you don’t like the idea of using a remote CVS server, you could try installing CVSNT on your XP. Personally, I don’t like storing source code on a Windows environment thanks to the threat of virus ruining my “entire” codebase.

Sorry could not be of much help..:-(

- Anand

Posted by: Anand Sharma at September 1, 2004 @ 10:24 am

Thanks Aanad for your reply,

I also dont want to store my whole code into Windows environment.
thats why i stored it on red hax linux server 7.2.

I’ve set up CVS Repository into Linux Server and my code is in there.

i know MyEclipse has CVS capabilites. What i dont know is how do i set up CVS Server so that i can access the code from My Eclipse. Other Developpers in the company also want to access the same code using MyEclipse.

I want to use all CVS facilies and capabilities so that if somebody in the eclipse environment working in the same file then both can check in their own changes and both changes should be reflected in the repository without stepping on each others tose.

I hope you got my question..
Please reply some necessary steps how to go thourgh to set up like this …
Thanks
Ankit.

Posted by: Ankit at September 2, 2004 @ 8:37 am

Hello Anand,

I need a big help from you. Since you said you use CVS, I need your build.xml file so that i can modify my build.xml file for CVS. We are migrating from SOS to CVS so build.xml file should be modified according to the CVS repository.

Please send me your build.xml file to ankit.shah@fiserv.com

Ankit.

Posted by: Ankit Shah at September 15, 2004 @ 8:59 am

What is the differnce in Core Dump and Code image

Posted by: Arun B Patil at February 27, 2005 @ 5:41 am

Hey, i need some help (my english is poor)

I was using Eclipse 3 normaly, so i installed oracle 9i runtime, since this my eclipse dont open. Do you know what can i do to fix it?

(im from brazil)
Mauricio Matias

Posted by: Mauricio at April 5, 2005 @ 9:02 am

Anand,

Was just surfing the net looking for some information when i bumped into your pages. You had mentioned looking for an alternative to Photoshop, try using GIMP. Considering that its free its really awesome… Can’t recall the site offhand.. you can try Googling for it.. :)
cheers,
anil

Posted by: Anil at May 3, 2005 @ 8:13 am

Hi Anand

Nice list of tools.

As you have good experience I need some information.

How can we use sftp in build.xml used in apache ant ?

Which version of ant supports ?

Can you please provide me syntax or link to any good website.

Thanks for your time.

Kavitha

Posted by: Kavitha at August 8, 2005 @ 11:09 am

Hello Anand,

I am new to CVS. We are using CVS on a windows machine. I need to automate some tasks in wincvs for creating builds. I would like to know if there are any scripts or is there a possibilty of developing our own applications where a user can key in their request and submit it such that, a script can run in the back ground on the wincvs server to churn out a build.

I am assuming that this can be automated in python. Please let me know.

Thanks in advance,
Hari

Posted by: Hari Mohan at May 3, 2006 @ 4:05 am

hii anand

i need u’r help regarding setup of CVS repository connecting to eclipse 3.1. I installed cvs on fedora core 4 then i’m able to access my CVS through terminal(i.e able to checkout n commit the file )but when i’m trying to access my cvs repository thru the eclipse i’m gettin problem of “connection refused with host” .
can u pls suggest me wat xactly problem b n how to correct it ,i’m trying to use pserver as access method thru eclipse.

thanx in advance.

Posted by: Ratnadeep at June 15, 2006 @ 2:52 am

Hi Anand,

I am using CVSNT as server and TOrtoise CVS as my client.
Since my server is located in a remote place, I had to make a GUI that can access the Server and do run the command like creating server, creating user, giving access rights etc…on the server.Now my work is complete.I made the GUI and commands are working properly…
but the problem is that i can create a repository but while checking out from the server to the client PC the copy of repository…
i am getting the error “Repository not found in the server”…
to solve this problem i now need to access the cvsNT server and add it manually from the repository tab from the CVSNT GUI…
Is there any way to add it using any commands like “CVS init” for creating repositories…
please help me…

Thanks,

Anoop

Posted by: Anoop at October 19, 2006 @ 2:39 am

Hi Anand

As you have good experience I need some information.

How can we use sftp in build.xml used in apache ant ?

Which version of ant supports ?

Can you please provide me syntax or link to any good website.

Thanks for your time.

Posted by: kiran at November 7, 2006 @ 7:01 pm

Hi

Very interesting information! Thanks!

G’night

Posted by: hiutopor at September 17, 2007 @ 1:33 pm

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