[robmccoll]

Is the prevailing opinion then that OS X really just isn't a good development environment? Seems like most of the suggestions so far are "install one or more Linux VMs". As someone who develops on a MacBook Pro everyday, I know I definitely fall in the Linux VM camp.

[JimDabell]

No, it doesn't matter what platform you are developing on or deploying to, if you are working on server-side stuff, use a VM.

It's not about needing tools from Linux, it's about keeping your development environment and your deployment environment separate. Otherwise all sorts of unwanted dependencies can creep in and it's difficult to reproduce the correct deployment environment outside of your development environment. If you manage your deployment correctly from the start, it's a hell of a lot easier.

For instance, if you install a web server in your case-insensitive development environment, write a load of code, then deploy to a case-sensitive deployment environment, then you may inadvertently introduce errors because you got the case wrong somewhere in your code. You introduced a dependency upon a development environment property that wasn't present in your deployment environment and things broke.

The environment you write code in and the environment you have to execute that code in are often very different things. Mixing them up is bad news – that's where virtual machines help you out by keeping the two separate.

[fit2rule]

I think OSX is a great development environment, it supports a great many toolsets and frameworks, and so on .. you don't have to go exclusively the Apple way, though that is changing more and more .. it is still a user-controlled Platform.

But the overlooked thing in this discussion is that its mostly about hardware. If someone made a hardware, physical device, that was as comfortable and life-friendly as a Macbook Pro, I'd switch to it in an instance. The Google pixel laptop looked promising, but was hobbled by sub-standard specs and a 'meh' attitude, it seems, but the point is whats overlooked is the physical experience that comes with using OSX.

So I'm with you, there's nothing quite like having the slab ramped up with some fat VM's. Linux works great in that environment, too ..

[bndr]

It is a good dev environment, but you shouldn't just install server stuff on your mac, that's what the VMs are for (so that all developers would have identical server setup).