Development Environment: 4 major types

Development environment software?

The local environment is an individual developer’s workstation where developers write code, fix bugs, and unit tests for any features. Making changes in the local environment will not affect other developers’ work and changes made by others. In the local environment, developers push the code to the shared development environment. So other developers will merge the code in this environment. Then, people can check whether a developed feature in the current space is working or not. Here are some important factors to consider when working in the development environment:?

- Make sure that people provide internal and external services that are available in the desired state.?

- People install, download or resolve all dependencies and artifacts correctly.?

- It requires the right folder permissions.?

- Setting up the logging system correctly to assist local debugging any problems.?

- Using automation scripts to perform in the development environments or execute teardown/update of an available environment.?

- Communicating with remote databases and servers to set up correctly.?

- Integration tests are run to make sure the changes don’t break the software.?

- Creating and using containers wherever possible.?

- Maintaining a common environment-based software application in an isolated file and allowing developers to overwrite it.?

Test environment

The testing environment is essential in the software development life cycle and requires a high level of attention. This development environment software helps developers experience the product via eyes of testers who are finding and revealing problems. Moreover, developers use automated checks to ensure existing functionalities in the development environment. People push the code to the test environment for testers to test the product in the custom software development project. Many developer teams use multiple test environments. Here are key things to consider when implementing a test environment:?

- Test environment helps perform quick, frequent, and automated testing execution. The checks are at the user interface and API level to give quick feedback.?

- Have test data solutions to provide new/recycled data if required.?

- Remove the environments and resources using automation scripts if required.?

- Keep monitoring the development environment for users.?

- Integrate communication tools such as Slack to notify automated test results or any problems quickly.?

- Make sure servers, devices, tools, and services are working as expected.?

- Ensure the containers and orchestration tools are ready to use.?

- Use Infrastructure-As-Code to provision and configure the development environment.?

Staging environment?

The “staging” (also known as Pre-Production) environment helps mirror the actual production environment for the custom software development process. The main goal of a staging environment is to check the installation, configuration, and services before putting it into the production stage. In this way, any problems in the staging environment won’t impact real-time users or clients in the production environment.?

It’s essential to find any problems before users see the final software in real-time in the staging environment. This type of development environment can allow software developers to test any upgrades. You need to define upgrade issues before deploying those upgrades into the production stage. The following things to consider when using the staging environment are:?

- The staging environment should be a close match to the production environment.?

- The environment is visible only to intended users and not to the end-users using whitelisting IPs and usernames.?

- Show data refresh if required.?

- Automated scripts to update the environment if required.?

- Ensure the monitoring and alerting systems will run smoothly.?

- The network endpoints and databases have the same configuration as the production environment.?

- Use containers and container-orchestration tools if possible.?

- Have the ability to roll back deployed code safely and quickly.?

Production environment?

Production environment (sometimes considered as Live or Prod environment) is one of the different types of development environments. A production environment is a place in which the real-time customers interact with the software product. Here are some things that you might consider when using this type of development environment.?

- It’s essential to use necessary services/applications and there should be redundancy in the development environment.?

- The environment should increase the time and reduce the downtime.?

- It requires Disaster Recovery mechanisms and solutions.?

- It’s important to showcase all product features in the production environment and release capabilities based on customer requirements.?

- It should present patching mechanisms to update production elements without any user impact.?

- Giving production level access and permissions to people who need it.?

- Ensure the monitoring and alerting systems are working properly.?

- Showcasing the comprehensive and updated documentation of the production environment.?