PHP IDEs part 5: taking stock

OK, what’s happened since my last post? Well, I’ve been busy coding, using the Zend IDE
exclusively. It hasn’t crashed once, although javaw.exe is taking up between 65 and 120Mb of RAM which is making my computer sluggish at times.

I’ve been recommended to look at TruStudio, so I will give that a test. It’s also been pointed out that if I’m going to use the IDE a lot then limiting the price and ending up with something that doesn’t help much is not a good idea. While the thought of spending a few hundred pounds on an IDE goes against the grain (particularly when I want to get Photoshop CS2) I understand the point being made, and have therefore removed my price limit.

What’s my current testing list look like?

* Zend Studio 4.02
* “PHPEd”:http://www.nusphere.com
* “Eclipse”:http://www.eclipse.org with “Xored TruStudio”:http://www.xored.com
* “Eclipse”:http://www.eclipse.org with “PHPEclipse”:http://www.phpeclipse.de
* “Gvim”:http://www.vim.org (putting it off, but “will use these tips”:http://www.schlitt.info/applications/blog/index.php?/archives/331-Comfortable-PHP-editing-with-VIM-3.html)
* “Maguma”:http://www.maguma.com (maybe, but getting doubtful as no help from their support)
* “ActiveState Komodo”:http://www.activestate.com
* “VS.Php”:http://www.jcxsoftware.com/vs.php

One question that keeps coming up is “Can the editor be Windows-only, or does it have to be cross-platform?”. My current thinking is that Windows only is fine, because although I have enjoyed playing with a Linux desktop, I run Windows XP on my main machine and have no reason to change.

Maybe I’m going for a too heavy environment, and an editor with a debugger would do. I don’t know, it throws out a whole load of extra options to evaluate…

It’s time to take stock of my requirements again. This list is going to grow over the next few days as I think of them (I really should have written them down as they came to me while coding).

h3. Requirements

# It must offer code insight to files within PHP’s include_path (eg PEAR libraries). This saves me going online to the manual every time to check the syntax… and if the editor’s smart enough to compile a dictionary of functions/classes/methods in these files rather than rescanning the file every time, so much the better.
# I would really like debugging which can be built into the server. So when something stops working in my home-grown application framework, I can use a debugger to see what’s going on in each file, rather than adding print and print_r statements to many files.
# Code templates - so I don’t have to type every character in a foreach loop or class statement for example. Most editors provide this.

h3. Non-requirements

* CVS integration - I use “TortoiseCVS”:http://www.tortoisecvs.org and “TortoiseSVN”:http://www.tortoisesvn.org which integrate beautifully wherever the Windows file browser is used.
* Bloat. Stupid memory usage is out. Although judging by the performance of the market leader, I can’t be too picky on this.

h3. Would be nice to have

* Code folding. It does make moving around long files nicer.
* UML/refactoring. A vague requirement because I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but I’ve reached the point where I see an advantage in using UML while designing/planning.

Like most things, and however hard I try not to, I am looking for perfection. I know I’m not likely to find the perfect IDE out there ( in a perfect world I wouldn’t be using PHP ) but something that suits and speeds up my development.