Thought I’d add a bit more to this. I finished all the code for SyncBridge on the 6th of July. I don’t just mean code complete, I mean tested and bug-fixed etc. First thing in the morning on the 7th of July I went on vacation for six days, leaving MJ to organise our new server. When I came back, we had a shiny new server from 123reg waiting to have all the code installed and smoke-tested, except we had no shell access.
One day later, we get shell access, and find a bastardised version of the FreeBSD 4.11 (!) operating system underneath (we were expecting at the very least a vanilla install). I mean, this installation had all kinds of crazy things set up in it, and most of what comes as standard was missing.
So, a week-end later, after struggling to install a new version remotely, we get to Monday and tech support who tell us that we can’t install vanilla FreeBSD on there. By the end of Monday I have a P4 FreeBSD box installed and ready with the SyncBridge code on it, courtesy of excellent service from Exist (who chatted with me online from initial contact through to delivery of server details). Getting SyncBridge up and running on there was literally just a few hours work, installing all the necessary infrastructure.
I’ve now smoke-tested everything, and hopefully we’ll be able to get the beta out there this evening. The inaugural Cocoaheads (Belfast chapter) meeting is tonight, so we might unveil it there and get some beta testing done at the same time.