Here at Netbasic we’ve been using PhpEd for some time, but recently we’ve taken the move to Eclipse, using the PHP Development Tools (PDT) plug-in. It certainly doesn’t lack features (due to the entirely pluggable design), and isn’t bad looking. Takes some getting used to, as moving development environments does for anyone, but I’m mostly used to it now. The CollabNet plugin is handy, and allows us to connect to our SourceForge 5.0 install directly from Eclipse, as well as having Subversion etc.. Generally, it’s the same as PhpEd anyway, but free-er under the Eclipse Public License (EPL).
December 8th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I was hoping to see some pros and cons for each one…
Why did you move?
December 9th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Well the main difference is that Eclipse is pluggable, which basically means you can do almost anything with it. For example, we used the direct FTP upload in PhpEd, but I don’t think there is anything like that for PhpEd, so our tech lead Kelvin just made a plugin for Eclipse that does it. The advantage of course, is that because it’s all open source, you can change it to do anything you want.
We moved primarily because we were told by Kelvin to, I don’t really have much input, but I can see why – it integrates into Sourceforge much easier, and just feels so much more “professional” and advanced. It’s like a really good version of Visual Studio but for PHP, and without all the Microsoft rubbish that VS has.
The fact that Zend Studio actually uses PDT and Eclipse as it’s core should be enough to say how driven towards PHP it is – so basically PDT is Zend Studio without all the bells and whistles… but then again, you can add any bells and whistles you want through the very easy upgrade menu system.
Another big pro, is that it’s free! And everyone likes free software, amirite?