How to setup a development environment for Node.js/MongoDB in Windows?

I'm not asking about how to install node.js and mongodb, but I'm asking how I might improve my process:

  • I have a folder called "_run" that contains a link to:
    • sublime text 2
    • power cmd
    • link to the site (dev|production|tests...)
  • I start by opening the sublime text and power cmd programs;
  • Then I have some link in power cmd that allows me to click on them and run the command in one of the cmd views. (like start mongo process, start node process, start node-inspector...)

Is there anything I might improve?

If you're running and hosting on windows you could look at possibly using iisnode. It's a iis module that runs node for you. Then when you make updates to any file, you just have to recycle that app pool. It also lets you debug your code via your browser.

How do you plan to do your hosting? If you plan on going with straight node hosting like nodejitsu or something along those lines, iisnode wouldn't be the best choice, but I personally have a need for .NET hosting, so iisnode is a nice way for me to keep everything hosted together. Sublime is a fantastic editor, which I'm sure you already know, so definitely stick with that.

EDIT

In that case, I would suggest to use something that manages your applications packaging and deployment. Something like grunt would be nice. Grunt will allow you to run unit tests, jshint, minify your code, and start your web server all in one command. When you run grunt, it looks for your configuration in a Gruntfile that tells it what to do. Another tool is Yeoman. Yeoman actually uses grunt along with some other tools to manage your projects for you. It manages node modules per application, and it can be configured for multiple different deployment types, i.e. Dev, Test, Prod. I've only used it on my linux box though, so I'm not sure about how well it plays with Windows. Grunt should be fine, but Yeoman might not. I seem to remember Yeoman not running under windows.