Linux like development environment in Windows

I am a fan of Linux based OS. I love Ubuntu a lot. In fact I started my programming in Redhat. So from the beginning I am comfortable using Linux than Windows. The only reason I use windows is to check IE browser compatability.

Recently I attended Drupal Sprint India 2009. I want to attend the sprint, so I need one Laptop to go there and work. My company provided me Laptop with Windows. So I need to work on drupal core issues in windows. Hmm it looks very hard for me to work in Windows. I want to have following things in my Windows machine.

1. Cygwin to get the linux like terminal, so that I can see paths with forward slash.
2. Xampp Lite to get Apache, Mysql, PHP.
3. cvs, I am going to work on drupal core so I need it
4. I should able to create patches, apply patches.
5. I want to use Drupal Drush module, which provides some command line utilities
6. Emacs. I am more comfortable with this editor. It is very hard to work with other editors once we are comfortable with Emacs

First I installed the things I know like Cygwin, Xampp Lite.

Installing Emacs

I Installed Emacs by following instructions at http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/math/ALee/emacs/emacs.html .

Installing UnxUtils

To be able create patches and apply patches I installed unxutils from http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils/ . With this unxutils I got most of the Linux commands. The commands like ls, mkdir, wget, diff, patch, tar, zip etc… are working. I am very happy after installing unixutils.
Installing UnxUtils is nothing but setting the path variable in Windows. I extracted the unixutils directory in C folder and Add C:\unixutils\usr\local\wbin path to the Path variable. In Windows XP we can set the Path variable by going to control panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables. Select the Path and click Edit and add your path to the existing path.

Installing Drush

There is a documentation about installing Drush in Windows http://drupal.org/node/594744 . This document explain Drush installation by using GnuWin32. But I already installed UnxUtils so I don’t require GnuWin32. So first 3 steps in the http://drupal.org/node/594744 can be ignored. I extracted drush in C folder. As specified in the step 4 of http://drupal.org/node/594744 I edited drush.bat with the path of php.exe and path of drush.php. I added following statement in drush.bat file
@E:\xampplite\php\php.exe C:\drush\drush.php %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

Because I used xampplite to install php, php is there at path E:\xampplite\php\php.exe.Now I executed drush command from the windows terminal by specifying -r and -l attributes.
After that I got an idea why can’t I keep this php, drush paths also in path so that I can directly drush.bat file as it is. Yes I added php, drush, mysql paths in Windows Path variable. The everything works file.

Installing cvs

I downloaded TortoiseCVS from http://www.tortoisecvs.org/download.shtml. This is a exe file, I can simple double click and execute.

That’s it, Now I installed all the things necessary to work on drupal with a linux like environment. Now I am happy to work on windows.