Thread

http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/
anyone using it?

I really want to like Eclipse, but if it is still going to be a memory hog with a nightmare config, a so-so editor, and feature code insight that doesn’t understand what classes are tacked on by the Loader class, then it’s not for me.  I understand the latter is a difficult issue, but having it addressed would be a huge productivity help and get past the other problems—even if I have to add PHPdoc to say things like:

class Foo extends Controller() {
  function Foo() {
    $this->load->library('validation');
    /**
    * Henceforth, $this->validation is understood to be an instance of CI_Validation
    * @var $this->validation CI_Validation
    **/

    ...
}

At last check, that wasn’t working.

I’ve been using PDT since the early beta releases and just downloaded v1.0 yesterday and it seems to run very smoothly on a Windows development workstation with 1GB RAM.  Here is my overall impression:

Positives:
1) It’s free!
2) Runs relatively quickly once it loads.
3) Great code hinting, code completion, code folding.
4) Great inline syntax checking ... saves a lot of page reloads.
5) Project management tools built into eclipse (projects, tasks, etc.)
6) Code outlining (breaks PHP files into tree structure for quick access to classes, variables and functions).
5) The All-in-one download also includes the Web Tools Project which offers decent HTML/CSS code hinting and code completion.  This is great for HTML coding in CI Views.
6) A built-in debugger is available (Zend or XDEBUG)—I have not used this yet.
7) You have access to all of the other great Eclipse plugins available (Subclipse, Aptana, database tools, Javascript editors, etc.)

Drawbacks:
1) Slow initial load.
2) Large memory footprint.
3) Previous beta versions had some stability issues (most appear to have been resolved in 1.0)
4) No code hinting for CI objects from Loader (as mentioned above).  You still get code hinting for some CI functions (e.g. base_url, anchor), as long as you add the entire CI system directory as an external library in your project.  I agree that this would be a major productivity boost.

If you work a lot with JavaScript/AJAX, keep an eye on Aptana.  It’s also built on Eclipse with extensions for many popular JavaScript libraries.  Aptana also recently added support for PHP—but it does not match the PHP functionality of PDT yet.  However, it has very nice HTML, CSS support.

For now, I still utilize Dreamweaver for HTML/CSS, then switch to Eclipse PDT for CI/PHP work.  For small scripts UltraEdit is a good solution as well.

I use Aptana w/ the RoR plugin for all of my Ruby on Rails development. For PHP, I am stuck with Notepad++ - it’s just so damn awesome. I don’t see a need for a full-fledged IDE when programming in PHP.

I tend to switch back to UltraEdit from time to time, but find larger-scale PHP projects easier to develop in an IDE.  Is RoR more difficult to code without an IDE vs PHP?

I’ve been using PDT 1.0 M1 for a while now and really like it.  Agree with previous posters, CI loader support would be nice, but I’m not so dependent on autocomplete functionality that I can’t live without it either.  As others said, slow to load,but works well once it’s up and running.  I’ll have to download 1.0 and take a look.

Jim.