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## 15 Using GPS for Remote Development

In a network environment, it is common for programmers to use a desktop computer that is not directly suitable for their development tasks. For example, each developer may have a desktop PC running Windows or GNU/Linux as their main entrypoint to the company network. They may do all their actual development work using project resources shared on networked servers. These remote servers may also be running an operating system that is different from the one on their desktop machine.

A typical way of operating in such an environment is to access the server through a remote windowing system such as X-Window. GPS does indeed work in such a context but it is not necessarily the most efficient organization. Running GPS remotely on a shared server will increase the workload of the server as well as the traffic on the network. When the network is slow or saturated, user interactions can become uncomfortably sluggish. This is unfortunate because the desktop used to access the network is often a powerful PC that remains idle most of the time. To address this situation, GPS offers the option to run natively on the desktop, with compilation, run and/or debug activities performed transparently on one or more remote servers.