OK, this is both ridiculous and cool at the same time. I need to write code for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux for work, and I like to work offline at cafes since I actually tend to get more work done when I’m not on the Internet (totally amazing, I know). This presents two problems:

1. I need a laptop that will run Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
2. I need to work offline when we use Subversion for our revision control system at work.

Solving problem #1 turns out to be quite easy: get a MacBook (Pro), and run Mac OS X on it. Our server runs fine on Darwin (Mac OS X’s UNIX layer), and I can always run Windows and Linux with Parallels Desktop if I need to.

For serious Windows coding and testing, though, I actually need to boot into real Windows from time to time (since the program I work on, cineSync, requires decent video card support, which Parallels doesn’t virtualise very well yet). Again, no problem: use Apple’s Boot Camp to boot into Windows XP. Ah, but our server requires a UNIX environment and won’t run under Windows! Again, no problem: just install coLinux, a not very well known but truly awesome port of the Linux kernel that runs as a process on Windows at blazing speeds (with full networking support!).

Problem #2 — working offline with Subversion — is also easily solved. Download and install svk, and bingo, you have a fully distributed Subversion repository. Hack offline, commit your changes offline, and push them back to the master repository when you’re back online. Done.

Where it starts to get stupid is when I want to:

• check in changes locally to the SVK repository on my laptop when I’m on Mac OS X…
• and use those changes from the Mac partition’s SVK repository while I’m booted in Windows.

Stumped, eh? Not quite! Simply:

• purchase one copy of MacDrive 6, which lets you read Mac OS X’s HFS+ partitions from Windows XP,
• install SVK for Windows, and
• set the %SVKROOT% environment variable in Windows to point to my home directory on the Mac partition.

Boom! I get full access to my local SVK repository from Windows, can commit back to it, and push those changes back to our main Subversion server whenever I get my lazy cafe-loving arse back online. So now, I can code up and commit changes for both Windows and the Mac while accessing a local test server when I’m totally offline. Beautiful!

But, the thing is… I’m using svk — a distributed front-end to a non-distributed revision control system — on a MacBook Pro running Windows XP — a machine intended to run Mac OS X — while Windows is merrily accessing my Mac HFS+ partition, and oh yeah, I need to run our server in Linux, which is actually coLinux running in Windows… which is, again, running on Mac. If I said this a year ago, people would have given me a crazy look. (Then again, I suppose I’m saying it today and people still give me crazy looks.) Somehow, somewhere, I think this is somewhat toward the evil end of the scale.