Eclipse PHP IDE Review

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This is unfinished stuff

Contents

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Intro

I am currently developing PHP-based web applications and because I have had good experience with Eclipse (although some packages are a bit immature) I wanted to use it for PHP as well.

Luckily there are a few open (or at least free) plugins which promise IDE features for PHP. This is a small review, which might get the occasional update if new versions appear. Due to the fact, that I am developing on a PPC-Mac and use a x86-Linux-box at home, the review is biased toward usability on those platforms. On other systems, your mileage may vary.

All of the tools mentioned below are in beta stage, some more so (especially Eclipse PHP IDE (now called PDT)).

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Contest

I tried all three IDEs mentioned below, but left out simple syntax-colouring solutions, which do not offer integration of more advanced tools, like syntax checking, outlining and auto-completion to name a few.

The judgement is based on my experience and therefore might not be objective. Every now and then a new release of a package appears, which might change things dramatically, so have a look at the details below to see, what version has been reviewed on what platform.

Database-integration and handling of pure HTML-files is a plus, but -as there are separate tools for this- not a requirement.

For me stability ranks higher than more features, as those tend to be useless if unstable.

As all tools are checked on more recent hard- and software, incompatibilities with older versions or performance issues on older systems are not reviewed.

I also assume that you are familiar with the way Eclipse works, so no details on installation of packages are given.

As I have to use PHP5 and object-oriented features, handling of the most recent version of PHP is a must (for me), and packages unable to handle PHP5 will get bad marks.

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Contestants

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Details

This document is unfinished as you can see...

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PHPEclipse

This has been the first PHP-IDE I tried.

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Pros
  • Large feature set
  • Debugger (on Windows, never worked for me on Mac and Linux)
  • Integration of external tools for HTML-editing and log-file-reading
  • Large user community
  • Actively developed
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Cons
  • Extremely buggy
  • Debugger almost impossible to install
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xored TruStudio

Developed as a combined PHP and Python IDE by russian software-shop xored, this has been one of the earlier PHP-IDEs for Eclipse. There is a community version, which can be downloaded for free as well as a commercial version with advanced features, which you have to buy.

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Pros
  • More stable than PHPEclipse, which had severe stability issues on some platforms (Mac, Linux)
  • Feature set large enough to make it usefull for real work.
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Cons
  • Apparently not developed actively any more (the current version 1.0.1 has not been updated since over a year).
  • Missing features
  • Complicated to install (especially if you do NOT want the Python part, which is not worth it).
  • Some bugs remaining, which make usage a bit problematic
  • Not up-to-date concerning the latest PHP5
  • Debugger problems on Mac and Linux
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PDT (formerly PHP-IDE)

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Pros
  • Support from Zend (they plan to migrate their IDE to Eclipse once PDT is finished.
  • Under active development, beta releases are actually stable enough to be usable.
  • Some features are still missing, but it does not crash as often as the other two PHP IDEs.
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Cons
  • Still a bit green.
  • Some things do not work reliably (some auto-completions for example).
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Conclusions

PDT (formerly PHP IDE) wins hands down. Most stable environment, feature-rich enough to be usable (haven't really tested the debugger). Most professionally managed and active project. Support from Zend. Support from Eclipse.org. Unless you have other reasons to use one of the two contestants, this is the PHP IDE to use for Eclipse. xored seems to be dead and I would advise not to use it any more. PHPEclipse looks good, and might be a nice tool if the authors manage to fix most of the more anoying instabilities (keep in mind, that this is from a Mac or Linux perspective, I have not had time to look at the situation under Windows -but as Eclipse is cross-platform, I assume, that at least some of the errors crop up there too).

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