Remote Pair Programming

Posted by James Mead Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:48:22 GMT

A while ago, Chris mentioned that we’ve been trying out a few ideas for making remote pair-programming easier. We’ve been doing quite a bit more remote pairing recently. Most of the time we just use a combination of VNC (I’ve been using Vine Server) and voice over Skype (using a headset really helps).

But something else we’ve used successfully is multi-user GNU screen sessions. The advantage of this technique is that much less bandwidth is required and the terminal is much more responsive. I thought I’d post the magic incantation we’ve been using (on OSX), in case anyone else finds it useful…

  # on the server
  sudo chmod u+s /usr/bin/screen

  # first user connects to server over ssh and runs the following
  screen -S <session_name>
  ctrl-A :multiuser on
  ctrl-A :acladd <client_username>

  # second user connects to server over ssh and runs the following
  screen -x <server_username>/<session_name>

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Honourable Mention for Mocha

Posted by James Mead Thu, 10 May 2007 15:15:00 GMT

I just downloaded an updated version of the Pragmatic Bookshelf’s Agile Web Development with Rails book. Maybe it’s been there a while, but I just noticed Mocha is mentioned at the end of the chapter on testing. :-)

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Dot-com survivor

Posted by James Mead Thu, 03 Aug 2006 19:21:00 GMT

It’s good to see FirstLook for whom I did my first eXtreme project while at Lante Corp in Chicago has survived the dot-com bust and is now branching out.

It even looks as if they are still using XP.

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