Zend Debugger for PDT

If you are attempting to debug in PHP, PDT is your answer. Listed in Software Updates as the Zend Debugger Feature, it can be plugged into your Eclipse build via the following address:

http://downloads.zend.com/pdt

It's free and it works seamlessly in conjunction with MAMP. When you run it, debug dialog is displayed in the panels in the Eclipse IDE. Objects can be halted via breakpoints for inspection.

Something else that is not free but I'm evaluating in response to upward trending: JetBrains PHPStorm IDE. On initial inspection, seems to offer the same web tools as Eclipse offers.

As a potential mid-weight candidate between TextMate and Eclipse, it could bust the whole thing wide open. After all, informative and easy's all I'm asking for, doesn't matter who provides it. Open source development is fine, but it tends to force platform specialization on the end user. I don't mind paying to avoid that.

Eclipse updates pt 1

This day has allowed me to explore the capabilities of Eclipse as a standards-based SDK. Perhaps not news to those who already use it for such, but since I use Flash Builder almost exclusively for Flash-based development, this is fresh territory. This further exploration came about as the result of a recent back-end dev project where the IDE options played out as either:

• TextMate
• vi on the Terminal CLI
• Coda

I haven't delved into Coda, though I have a good amount of exposure on the other two. Let me state for the record that I endorse the viability and value of TextMate as an IDE. Now, clarifications duly stated, I would like an IDE that provides:

• managing repositories such as svn and git
• code lookup and completion for JavaScript, including 3rd party libraries
• code lookup and completion for PHP
• bracket pairing assistance that is broadside-of-a-barn obvious
• local file, folder and directory management
• quick access to function and property definitions (cmd-click seeking)
• optionally, FTP management

I'd be happy to address which of these are addressed to my satisfaction in the above-listed IDEs, but for now I will summarily say none of them hit all the targets. That could be due to my own habits - perhaps blinders on my part - I would love nothing more than to be further educated on this. Beyond that, some of the newer PHP frameworks at large (CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Symfony) boast unit testing, and I would prefer an IDE with debugging breakpoints and object inspection so I can see what fury my code hath wrought in the runtime.

Thus far, I have done the following to spec up Eclipse:

1. Update to Eclipse Helios 3.6
2. Install PHP and JavaScript language packs for Eclipse
3. Install eGit for Helios (tested and working)
4. Install Aptana (see mild apprehension*)
5. Install Eclipse Web Tools

*Aptana bills itself as:

a set of application development tools for Web 2.0 and ajax for use with programming languages such as JavaScript, Ruby, PHP and Python.

They had a big buzz out of the gate as a premium solution vendor to the open-source community. By late 2009 their revenue stream was lacking to the point of significant downscaling and they have consequently reduced their support and development staff. Their current 2.x release is bemoaned as unpredictable, buggy and meretricious, resulting in retrograde support for the deprecated 1.5 version package. Furthermore, Aptana was aquired less than a month ago by an outfit called Appcelerator. In short, Aptana has a legacy of step-child treatment.

Thus my concern with installing and testing out Aptana. Since it is one of only two commonly-employed means of third-party javascript code completion, I went ahead with it. Installing Aptana is the first step. Following success with that, its proprietary set of plug-ins allows jQuery to work with it. I succeeded with the first part, but unfortunately their plug-in service has proven to be currently offline. On to the next option: Eclipse Web Tools.

Eclipse Galileo 3.5 to Helios 3.6

I did Windows for a long time. And I'm still ok with it (though I stopped upgrading at XP SP2). Just the same, I'm all in with Mac for the past couple of years. The wherefore comes down to OS X, and more specifically, Unix. Can't beat having an underlying layer of open source OS!

I'm upgrading Eclipse today. I had announced with great fanfare the coming of Eclipse Galileo, but Helios found me focused on other things, so I'm stepping up the SDK to 3.6 now. On the Windows/Mac front, I prefer the small install and configuration footprint of unix apps vs the windows registry. Power Windows users may opine otherwise, but I find the modularity of apps on the mac to be quite painless.

That said, I'm opting not for a clean install of Eclipse 3.6, but rather an upgrade from 3.5 using the software updates dialog. A little background, I use both Flash Builder and Eclipse on my MacBook, the former for AS3 and Eclipse for JS, PHP, Python, basically 'everything else'. I have added Subversive SVN to FB and it works great, and with the possible exception of mylyn in the future, I plan to keep FB in quarantine. (update: broke my own rule there, I added eGit to FB and it is flawless.)

This is just a safety, as I have had issues with other FB installs going off the rails when too many open-source libraries are added to the SDK. It can be a real train wreck when this happens, especially if you're facing a killer deadline. For the record, any deficiencies with Eclipse as a platform are simply the small and acceptable dark side to a robust and maverick developer community. So I keep FB static and use Eclipse as my test lab.

As for the SDK upgrade, it worked great. Here is a simple FAQ from Eclipse to follow. When the dialog presents you with a list of available upgrades, choose only those listed as 3.6. Better not to upgrade too many things all at once.

This is part of a larger operation which I will also post about. Namely, getting a JS/PHP/Git environment up and running within the Eclipse SDK. I've worked with TextMate thus far and will sing its charms, however, I've used Eclipse long enough to love what it does, so developing in a fully Integrated DE is my goal.