Install PHP support PDT in Eclipse Indigo

Developed by Zend and IBM, Eclipse PDT add support for PHP development and allow to focus on the development of complex PHP-driven web applications. There is currently no package ready to download hence this small how to

How to install PDT

• Download any version of Eclipse 3.7 Indigo from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ and install.
• Once installed, launch Eclipse and navigate to Help->Install new Software.
• Add the Indigo update site http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo if you don’t find it in the list.
• Once the Indigo Update Site is added, add the PDT 3.0 Update Site http://download.eclipse.org/tools/pdt/updates/3.0/milestones/ 

Wait till download complete and restart Eclipse to enjoy PHP support!

Eclipse shared install on a Windows Server 2003/2008

I did develop this solution at work for our internal purpose at www.innoveo.com. Going away from the paradigm “As a developer I run everything locally” isn’t easy to accept but in some rare cases, it make sense. Below I list what I consider to be the main advantages and drawbacks.

Stability

• Not everybody is changing the developer environment as you need admin right to be able to do changes, more stability.
• The developer environment is standardized: convention over configuration always pays like in Apache Maven.

Sharing

• you can work from anywhere as long as you have an internet/VPN connection
• You can move your working place around, show your workspace to a colleague, reduce your coupling to Windows, use Linux, use a Mac!

Security

• The source code stay on the server, if someone steal notebooks you don’t loose your software assets.

Efficiency

• Somebody maintains the developer environment and settings for you, some developers can still beta test a new eclipse version before till it is considered stable.
• Rollout is limited to a minimum loss of time, as you will see below 
• Setting up a new developer account is basically settings up a new account on the shared server, running 3 lines of shell.
• The server  is not full of unwanted applications running in background, only java.exe. eclipse.exe, databases can still run on another server (MYSQL, Oracle), runtime environment (Tomcat).

Speed, speed and speed

• A server is cheap compare to one big notebook for every developer.
• Server is most of the time fully 64bits, may have up to 8 cores, RAID 5 typically  output 350Mb/s read (a good notebook: 32 bits, 2 cores and 80Mb/s without SSD)

Drawbacks

• A shared developer environment is a Single point of failure –> you need a very good backup, and eventually hardware fallback machine in hot standby!
• You can not work if developer have no or limited internet access, in train for example.
• It required a bit of initial engineering, hence this article.

Read more: Eclipse shared install on a Windows Server 2003/2008

Eclipse Indigo/New and Noteworthy

Eclipse Indigo is the annual release of Eclipse projects on June 22 2011; this year 62 project teams are part of the release.

New and Noteworthy

• Eclipse Webtools Project
• Eclipse Platform
• Eclipse Mylyn
• Eclipse Target Management (RSE)

JBossTools

• http://www.jboss.org/tools/download/ Not ready yet for Eclipse Indigo
• http://docs.jboss.org/tools/whatsnew/index.html

Eclipse 3.5 news and noteworthy

It is always difficult to discover what’s new in every Eclipse release, as the number of features is just growing over the years. More difficult is even to locate the new and noteworthy page, that’s why I list them all below for eclipse 3.5

News and noteworthy pages contains interesting or significant changes made to the Eclipse Platform for the 3.5 release of Eclipse.

• New for Eclipse 3.5 milestone build M7 (April 30, 2009)
• New for Eclipse 3.5 milestone build M6 (March 27, 2009)
• New for Eclipse 3.5 milestone build M5 (February 6, 2009)
• New for Eclipse 3.5 milestone build M4 (December 12, 2008)
• New for Eclipse 3.5 milestone build M3 (October 31, 2008)
• New for Eclipse 3.5 milestone build M2 (September 19, 2008)
• New for Eclipse 3.5 milestone build M1 (August 8, 2008)

I have personally saved them all (since eclipse 3.3) in a directory for further references. I wish eclipse would list them all in their wiki

You’ll find a “What’s new page” also in your local help at http://127.0.0.1:1829/help/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/whatsNew/platform_whatsnew.html but it look smaller in size than the html counterpart.