Sam Oliver

If you follow my blog or if you are working on projects with me, then you may well be using the EasyEclipse setup I rave about on one of my previous posts.

So just to keep things complicated, I’m currently experimenting with switching away from EasyEclipse/PHPEclipse and trying out the latest official Eclipse (Europa) along with the PHP plugin PHP Development Tools (PDT).

PDT is being developed by Zend and IBM, which may add some standardisation between Eclipse and other popular IDEs.

Possible reasons to think about switching:

• PDT makes Eclipse behave more like it does with Java projects.
• PDT seems to be more actively developed than PHPEclipse.
• It’s noticeably faster (on OS X at least).
• The dock icon works properly.
• The GUI has improved slightly in Europa.
• Most importantly - the default colours are nicer.

*I’m not sure how many of these improvements are due to using Europa or PDT, as I upgraded both at the same time.

If you are convinced and want to give it a try, here’s how to get it going:

Step 1

Download and install Eclipse Classic from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

Step 2 

Install the following plugins through Help >  Software Updates > Find and Install

Choose ‘Search for new features to install’ and add these remote sites:

Name: PDT
URL: http://download.eclipse.org/tools/pdt/updates/

Name: Subclipse
URL: http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.2.x

Select the update sites, and also Europa discovery site and click ‘Finish’.

Select the required components to install, but deselect ‘Integrations (Optional)’ in Subclipse.  Press the ‘Select Required’ button to select the required packages for PDT. Follow the steps to install each plugin.

 Step 3

Restart Eclipse when prompted.  If you have been using EasyEclipse, you may need to change the default workspace path to /Users/<your user>/workspace, as by default it looks in ~/Documents/workspace.  It did for me anyway - none of my projects showed up until I changed it.

Step 4

Convert your EasyEclipse projects to PDT projects. Right click on each project and choose ‘Convert to PDT Project’. Note: you must be in the PHP Perspective/PHP Exlporer window for this option to be available.

Step 5

Have lots of fun with the new colours and options.. And let me know how you get on.

Sorry it’s been a while since my last post.  I’ve recently moved house and office so it’s taken a little while to get back to blogging!