This week was supposed to find the code complete and the web app up (at dev.kobayashicoding.net) and running. As these things go, however, I found myself doing some DevOps instead of coding.

I use JetBrains tools for development. I’ve been using PhpStorm for quite some time, and recently also licensed IntelliJ IDEA because I want to start learning Kotlin (and maybe even bone up on Java). The interface for these IDEs is pretty much identical (as far as I can tell), so I’ve been using IntelliJ IDEA recently, even on projects that I started in PhpStorm – including this current project.

Somehow in moving from PhpStorm to IntelliJ IDEA, I managed to delete the deployment configuration for this project. JetBrains tools – like most others I’ve used – have built-in FTP and SFTP clients to synchronize the local code with the actual web server, and I set mine up to upload any changed files whenever I do an explicit “Save” of all changed files. When I began working on the code again last week, I noticed that neither was the code being uploaded to the server, nor did I have the usual “Browse Remote Host” pane on the right side of the IDE’s window.

A quick look at the deployment configurations revealed that there were none. So, I spent more time that I should have configuring the settings for the host. This was not JetBrains’ fault – I simply failed to use the correct path to the local folder with the code for the site. Once I realized – and corrected – that, the code got synced and the changes I’d just made magically appeared.

I haven’t been as lucky with the other issue that also appeared. Using PhpStorm, I used to be able to run the local version of the site (I’m not actually using any Php, or anything else that requires a real web server), but the “Run” icon in the toolbar was grayed out. So I clicked the “Configurations” button and looked for the appropriate template to use, but have not yet been able to recreate the configuration I need. I guess I’ll have to actually resort to looking at the docs, or even <gasp> contact JetBrains tech support – which is awesome.

Tune in next week for the exciting continuing saga…