There’s a lot involved to get up and running with a new dev environment—it can be pretty troublesome in fact! After working on one machine for a while, it’s easy to forget (or take for granted) all of the software and helper tools you’ve installed slowly over time. But as soon as you want to get coding on a new machine, those tools are quickly appreciated!

Here are some of the steps I took to be able to keep coding while traveling with a temp laptop, and what I plan to do going forward to make it easier next time around:

• Store coding projects on Dropbox to sync project files across the machines. No need to push/pull commits using a remote repository.
• Keep a list of all of the tools I use (especially in the command line). I think even the simplest of lists would be a better place to start than trying to remember all of the software I’m used to using. Check search results for “dev environment new computer” to also check lists others have come up with.
• Keep a copy of my command line shortcuts (.bashrc file) in a GitHub gist for easy future reference.
• Document! Document! Document! Any time I do a new installation on my machine, I’ll take note of how I did it and any resources that helped with the installation.

Thoughts on this episode? Leave a comment at startovercoder.com/065 or tweet me @startovercoder.