In my last post I described how to use reverse ssh tunnels and screen -x to setup a remote pair programming environment.

Several people have commented that this works well for sharing a console based editor (vim, emacs) but that there is no way for the remote pair to look at how things are rendering in the browser. Well here’s a super simple way to use ssh tunnels to share your development server too. I’ve seen variations on how to do this (Advanced Rails Recipes: Pragmatic Programmers has one). The advantage to the below method is it requires no server configuration and is very secure from snooping.

There’s a lot of talk about remote pair programming, but the fact is it can be a pain to set up.  Using iChat screen sharing is a popular method, but can feel a little cludgy, and doesn’t work for developers running linux.  Here’s another method using reverse ssh tunnels and screen -x we use a lot at Beezwax.