Eclipse install notes
Today I installed Eclipse. Like my ubuntu-eee install notes, the following is not a how-to. I'm documenting my experiences so that knowlegeable users can compare (and correct me), and so that I have a reference for future Eclipsy activities.
Update: 2008-09-10 Eclipse has not really worked out for me at all. Checking stuff out of SVN and setting up projects worked fine, but when I went to write code, the code-completion features did not work at all--in fact, they crashed Eclipse entirely. I turned them off... and Eclipse still crashed. So maybe the following should serve as a "what not to do"...
- First of all I knew I needed to use PDT (PHP Development Tools for Eclipse). So I installed the Eclipse 3.3/PDT 1.0.3 bundle--Eclipse + PDT all pre-packaged. While this was labeled "stable", it turned out to be seriously crashy. So I went all cybermen and deleted it.
The second time around, I installed plain Eclipse (Ganymede), and used Eclipse's internal "update manager" to install...
- dltk (Dynamic Languages ToolKit, 'integration core frameworks' package, dltk-core-I)
- php features (PDT)
- subclipse (SVN integration)
Eclipse's update manager is under the help menu as "Software Updates..." (at least on the Mac). The first two plugins I downloaded as .zips and added within the Update Manager via Add Site... > Local... > path/to/unzipped/plugin. Subclipse I installed by adding the update site directly: Add Site... > http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.4.x (the other two were less clear about their Eclipse update manager URLs). yay, PHP and SVN support.
- I work with Drupal, which uses the .module and .install extensions for some php files, and I had tell Eclipse to treat files with those extensions as PHP. how to force php syntax highlighting in Eclipse--you get more than just syntax highlighting with this.
- When I first checked out my project from svn using subclipse, Eclipse didn't set it up as a PHP project, meaning that no code features were available. This FAQ was helpful: How do I manually assign a project Nature or BuildCommand? Project "nature" I guess has some sort of "project type" implications that make various project features and behaviors available, and "build commands" are "parse-y things that report php warnings and errors". As the link above specifies, I went into the .project file in my project's base directory and added the right "nature" and "build commands"; I got the correct values by creating a fresh php project and looking at its .project file.
It remains to be seen whether I actually like working in Eclipse, but I've resolved to give it a good try.
