SCCT Development Environment

A proof of concept for a development environment to provide a common cross-platform setup for students working either on university machines or on their own computers.

Once setup students should have a core development container (Ubuntu) supported by:

• mysql server (mariadb) with configured user and example databases
• mongodb server
• visual mysql administration tool (phpmyadmin)
• visual mongodb administration tool (mongo express)

So far only tested on:

• Windows (staff build)
• macOS (non-UWE build)

Setup and installation

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio Code
• Docker (desktop version recommended)

Installation

• Install prerequisite software
• Download SCCT Development Environment (currently the zip file in the root of this repository)
• Extract the zip file and open the workspace folder (scct-dev-environment) in Visual Studio Code - choose option 'Open in Container' when prompted
  • Or use the Remote Connection button (bottom left), choose 'Open Folder in Container...' and browse to the workspace folder
• Wait while container images are downloaded and initialised

Usage

• Once containers are ready Visual Studio Code should drop you into the Ubuntu container with the file explorer in your home directory
• Use Visual Studio Code as normal -- create new folders for workspaces and File > Open Folder to use the workspace
• Terminal > New Terminal to interact with the container
• Ports are already forward to allow access to:
  • the MySQL server (e.g. for MySQL Workbench) - on port 3306
  • PHPMyAdmin - on port 8080
  • Mongo Express - on port 8081

Ubuntu (core development container)

Python 3.12 (with pip and virtualenv packages) and git are included in the core container - need to work out what other packages we should include by default. Currently the container is locked down but we could setup scct to be able to run commands with sudo to allow them to install anything they want into the container.

MySQL

A user is provisioned on setup:

• Username: scct
• Password: scctdev

This user has full permissions to create/modify/drop any database starting with scct_. An example database (sakila) is also created and permissions set.

The server socket is shared between containers and mysql-client is installed so mysql can be used in terminal: mysql -u scct -p with password scctdev.

To connect to the server using python etc. hostname is just mysql with username and password as above.

MongoDB

WIP regarding provisioning users and example DBs -- not sure what is needed for students currently