SOHO and Apple

For the third month I have been working in a team, using Apple technology to solve management problems. I decided to share some points on which we were stuck and which had to be solved.

We have four people on the team, we work mostly remotely from each other (this is the main employment for only one person). We develop software for Macs, iPhones and do web services.

The following Google services were chosen as the primary platform for “collaboration”: Google Hosted Apps (mail and calendar) and Google Wave. We all use gabber, so I did not raise Gtalk separately. In fact, the mail for all was limited to redirects to the main mailboxes, the benefit of Gmail allows you to achieve almost complete transparency in this matter.

Issues that affected several people, and overall planning was left to the wave. In general, it turned out well. Why in general? First, for some, the question arose of using a separate browser (Google Wave does not behave very well in safari, and you have to use Chrome in parallel). Secondly, the service is subject to some instability. But Volna copes with the load placed on it, we even conduct team negotiations with customers through it, and both parties are satisfied. Also, Wave began to solve issues of tracking bugs, since Bugzilla has a very harsh interface, and Eclipse + Mylyn does not save.
')
Google Calendar has become a stumbling block. The web interface is certainly convenient, especially considering that one person spends most of his time with Windows, and web applications are relevant for him. SMS notifications allow you to not forget about scheduled events. But when it comes to multiple calendars, the situation changes. iCal generally does not behave very well at all with google synchronization ( BusyCal appeared only later), some problems arose when synchronizing with an iphone. I started looking for other solutions.

At this point, there was a need for a CI server, as the colleagues wrote tests from under the lash, convincing me of the complete uselessness of these. We had to come up with some kind of mechanism for visual impact. A collective solution was acquired by the Mac Mini, on which Snow Leopard Server was deployed.

A little back, I note that our main development tools are: Xcode, TextMate and vim. The first is used for mac / iphone projects, TM is the perfect “universal” editor, and vim is used where there is no macos at hand. We use Git repositories deployed via gitosis to store information, and Dropbox is used to transfer files. We solve rare voice conversations via Skype and, if necessary, “remotely steer” using an e-mail VNC (the cars see each other through the MobileMe / Wide Area Bonjour).

Returning to the server theme. First of all, I looked at what we can transfer to it. Having a lot of sex with OpenDirectory in different positions and settings in the virtual machine, I decided that we would completely survive the absence of kerberos, because I could not configure it. Thus, OD began to manage shared accounts only in terms of access and shared passwords for all services.

First of all, I screwed the iCal Server and Push Notifications. I must say that iCal with it, which is not surprising, works perfectly, functionally and very conveniently. Notifications by mail (which remained so with Google) did not start, but this was more than covered by the Push server. By the way, BusyCal with iCal Server does not work. To be able to reach the calendar via the web, the standard Apache was raised, where a comfortable and beautiful web snout was discovered (and also, to the heap, blogs and wikis, but they repeat the functionality of Google Wave).

The next service was raised again a regular VPN (L2TP over IPsec), which solved the problems of WAB and unavailability of machines, if there was no place to forward the port through NAT-PMP or uPNP (I remind you that a macos is registered in WAB only if it can agree with a higher-level router).

Then I took the CI, which was chosen as TeamCity (I chose almost at random). The primary criterion was the price, which completely suited me (the Pro version is free, although Enterprise has a great opportunity to log in via LDAP, including the e-mail-tagged OD). Having tried a separate installation and built-in OSX Tomcat, I stopped at the last one, but I didn’t have to screw it to a full-time Apache. The issue was resolved by installing nginx from ports, for which Apache and Tomcat were hidden. TeamCity is perfectly screwed to testing Python (Django), PHP and xcodebuild-projects (through tests from Google Toolbox Mac ). Jetbrains also has a really awesome YouTrack bugtracker, the main feature of which is full keyboard control, which we, as vim-eram, are very pleased :). In addition, it integrates with TeamCity and can also work with LDAP, but through a creepy stump-deck. On the whole, it leaves a feeling of some dampness. In general, I will observe its development, and if we decide to start a separate bugtracker, I will return to it. By the way, it’s okay to get it under Tomcat and Jetty, as well as to screw Standalone to nginx in the common domain to other applications.

Then it became somehow a bit expensive to manage projects based on iCal alone, and I looked towards Daylite . Full CRM with a nice poppy interface. But she began to duplicate already existing services (iCal, Address Book) without the possibility of integration, and she is not yet friends with the general LDAP user base. So having a little used it, I decided to try something else. So far, the eye lies on Merlin , I will try.

Just a few words about finance. Since all accounting goes through my hands, there is no need for a special collaborative approach, so Billings does an excellent job with money. I’m concerned about iTunes Connect financial reports because I couldn’t turn them into a readable form in Numbers, and I don’t want to put Excel on it. I get a general idea through AppFigures , but when it comes to sharing profits, I want to have more specific numbers. Most likely, we will write our processor and analyzer reports iTunes Connect and banking.

That's probably all for today. Share what you use to manage your business?

PS: I'm currently playing with DNS-SD to make a complete replacement for Back to My Mac. I hope to collect a separate article based on the results, because there are a lot of fine points in the setup.