Develop from Windows, run on a command-line Linux virtual machine

Question

I've always developed web apps on my Windows pc in a Linux virtual machine (programs and frameworks not always have full compatibility with Windows, but I find Windows handy for other reasons, so that's why I have this setup).

Virtual machine, though, sometimes makes the environment slow, so I'd like to have a different setup (a little bit odd).

I'd like to have a command-line Linux virtual machine in which the app is run, and I'd like to develop the app using my Windows text editor, saving my work in the virtual machine.

Is there a method to do this?

Answer 1

Apart from using VM's console interface that is provided by the most (if not all) of Windows hosted Virtual Managers, you could use putty at your windows desktop to access a VM running Linux with sshd daemon to allow putty to connect and samba service configured to 'export' some location inside VM's fs to allow you access the files over the network connection.

Perhaps, you would need to access this share by IP address from Windows workstation, not by its netbios name, i.e. \\192.168.100.2\sharename where the 192.168.100.2 is the IP of your VM.

As for Linux distro - it's a matter of taste and any recommendation would make an answer an opinion based. So, pick the one most familiar to you.

Answer 2

cyberduck + whatever text editor you want. You can use sublime text as a remote file manager - connected over sshfs or ftp. Set up your editor under preferences, rightclick on a file, pick edit.

Edit the file, and when you save it, it automatically uploads it to the linux system. I suspect this would also work with many IDE/text editors.