Development environment notes

Here is a good raw list of things to have when developing drupal sites....

Sacha from IBM -- http://bit.ly/drupal25

Spend the time to make a tool, if it make sense
Read editor documentation
Some browser plugins Tamper Data, iMacros, Drupal for Firebug (plugin and drupal module), trace module, drubuntu (for multisite is very useful)

Simpletest! I've got to research simpletest more

source code management - using svn, git, etc
--check out the whole source tree
--check in clean source for third party
--organize the sites/modules dir for development, etc

use update functions in the custom module install code.
create svn branches for production and dev
use make or ant to build your system
* sql --- connect db
* backup --backup db
* restore -- restore db
* clearcache -- clear cache
* tags -- rebuild VI tags
* doc -- update doxygen docs
* test -- run project tests
* parse settings.php file to get variables

Use the drupal shell! http://www.drupal.org/project/drush
vimperitor -- allows vim shortcuts for firefox
Use Virtual document root - apache can be the SVN checkout
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_vhost_alias.html#virtualdocumentroot
unfuddle
Write install profiles for projects
Aegir