Just wanted to add my thoughts there, I would suggest that we also keep pushing the https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/docs/OpenMRS+SDK as the defacto way to setup OpenMRS for both dev and testing since it makes the process so much easier.
I am not sure how to use it for core yet, but for module development and even field support I do not think there is any better way…
If I get some bandwidth I will probably write up a blog post on it