Setting up Remote Server Development Environment

This is a guide to setup remote server development enviroment (Ubuntu LTS) use the following:

1. zsh
2. Tmux
3. Neovim
4. Docker

The goal of this setup is to get rid of all dependencies that are caused by the end operating system, and hardware limitation. As long as you have a Linux-based machine, you can basically use any device to get access everything on that machine and start developing. This way, you can even use ipad to develop without any overheads of workflows such as IDEs, keymappings, environments, etc. At the same time, your code is able to run anywhere that supports docker.

Install Zsh#

First, update your system’s package repository to ensure you have the latest information:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install zsh -y

If you want to set Zsh as your default shell, use the following command:

chsh -s $(which zsh)

Enable SSH on your server#

sudo apt update
sudo apt install openssh-server

Check if it is running

sudo service ssh status

Install Tmux#

 sudo apt install tmux

Install Neovim#

via appimage#

In Downloads folder

wget https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/download/stable/nvim.appimage

mv nvim.appimage ~/Softwares/
chmod u+x nvim.appimage

If no FUSE, run via:

./nvim.appimage --appimage-extract

and you can execute with ./squashfs-root/usr/bin/nvim

To add it to .profile, add the following in .profile

PATH=$PATH:/$HOME/Softwares/squashfs-root/usr/bin

Apply configuration#

Install starship:

curl -sS https://starship.rs/install.sh | sh

Install stow to sync all the dot files

sudo apt install stow

Get the dotfiles

git clone https://github.com/tiankaixie/dotfiles.git

and then stow what ever you need

cd dotfiles
stow tmux
stow nvim

Or, apply all configurations

stow */

Install Docker#

Uninstall old versions

sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io containerd runc

Install using the apt repository

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg

sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

echo \
  "deb [arch="$(dpkg --print-architecture)" signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  "$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")" stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Install

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

If get permission problem, try the following to avoid sudo every time:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER