How can I perform cross browser testing when using Subversion as my version control system?

Question

I have recently installed subversion and nginx server on my machine (macbook pro). I'm fairly new to subversion as a whole and have just built a single webpage through this version control system, and now I'm faced with the task of testing it in all of the relatively modern web browsers. My biggest concern, as far as browser compatibilty is concerned, is Internet Explorer which, in order to test, I need Windows. I have Windows 7 installed on my mac via Virtual Box, and herein lies my problem.

I have not committed the new page I've just created to the repository, by the request of the client. Because of this, as far as I know, I have no URL to use for testing in IE Tester, Firefox for Windows, etc. How can I test this 1 page site's browser compatibility with without having committed any changes to the repository?

I can test it easily on my machine using MacOS, by just typing in local.*.org and it shows up. Again, windows is my issue. This project is due this Thursday (5/24/12), so you're help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

1) Developing and testing your web page is different from managing your web page source. In other words, testing web pages != using SVN.

2) If you've not actually been able to use SVN yet - and if your client has no preferences - then please try TortoiseSVN:

http://scplugin.tigris.org

3) Please post back any specific questions you have about installing/using SVN.

Answer 2

If the site uses any scripting languages like PHP, and/or databases, you need to get those setup correctly first. If your website consists of just HTML/CSS/JS... then you can access the website via either of these methods:

• Enable Web Sharing (System Preferences > Sharing > Web Sharing). Then type in the IP shown there into your browser in VirtualBox and it should load. (This is probably easier than trying to get nginx configured, though it might very well load if you just type in your machine's IP.)

• In VirtualBox, select your VM (powered off), Settings > Shared Folders. Add your website's root directory. Launch the VM, then browse to it within the VM and open up your files there for testing.

My current environment is setup like this: - Local dev machine with git & SVN - Remote DB server - Remote web server - Web server mounts local dev machine's www folder as a volume and serves the PHP pages from there - Load web browser in VMs or any other machines. Edit hosts file if need be for local routing.