Team development with node.js on a shared dev environment

How does one do team development with node.js when all the developers develop on the same dev machine?

Right now the dev server setup has nginx and apache. Developers SSH into the dev server and they have their own subdomained sandboxes to work on (database is shared). They hack their code and they check into the SVN repo. Great, works fine....until we started using node.js.

It seems node is not like apache or nginx where there's an independent server that serves up code. In node, the server AND the app code is tied together, so what happens is each developer will need to start and stop the server when changes are made. This creates a problem if one instance is started, it blocks the port for other developers.

I'm also having trouble figuring out how to put the node code into the same SVN repository as the PHP app code.

A friend told me the develop开发者_如何学Goers can do "timesharing" where the node code can only be modified by someone in a specific timeframe. Not sure if this process is scalable.

Another option is to have everyone work locally off their computer with a VM copy of the dev server so they can develop independent of the dev server. This requires a lot of infrastructure change and I'm not ready to do that yet.

Any suggestions on how to do this with the current shared dev environment setup?

Also, the reason why we are using node.js is to have good comet support. But if this is becoming a blockage to our current infrastructure, I'm willing to try other technologies and servers that is similar to how nginx or apache works--so that it is independent of the app code and can be compatible with our current development environment.

PS. I tried the nginx http push module. It's not well-maintained and not many updates. Scared to use it in production.

You could have each developer's instance of Node.JS running on a different port.