CodeStore.net comments on "Finally, a Decent LAMP Development Environment"

Reply from Ferdy

Ferdy — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 14:18:35 -0500

Jake, you probably know this, but I wanted to point out anyway that although PHP as a language has some frustrating elements, the development environment does not need to be. There's a lot of flavors available, but in my view the following are important:

- Source control. Use git, subversion, whatever your preference. But use them. Even for personal projects. You will never go back. You can't complain about not knowing which version is where if you don't use a source control system, and that applies to every platform you develop for.

- Remote debugging. Pretty much built-in in some other platforms, like .NET/Visual Studio, but in the case of LAMP you need to invest in setting it up. And you will be glad you did. Too many PHP developer are still "echo-ing" their debugging. Your productivity will increase dramatically using remote debugging. You are debugging a lot more than you think. Watch a developer all day, they're not writing new code, most of their time they're debugging.

- Build/Deployment automation. This is advise that I don't follow myself I must admit, but if you often do (complex) LAMP deployments, invest in a build process to automate parts of it.

Granted, the above things take some time to set up but you will be glad you did. Your development environment will be a lot more efficient, pleasant and reliable.

Reply from Jake Howlett

Jake Howlett — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 02:13:27 -0500

Yep, Zend Studio is based on Eclipse. Always makes me wince a little every time I install yet another version of Eclipse. I reckon I must have had half a dozen Eclipses on my PC at some point.

Reply from Ben Poole

Ben Poole — Thu, 31 May 2012 13:04:57 -0500

Splendid write-up. Coda 2 is pretty darned good from what I’ve seen so far. In the day job I’m doing all my PHP in Sublime Text 2 (another nice editor, cross-platform too!) against a linux app server running in VirtualBox. That’s quite nice too, as you can map your source directory on the host machine as the deployed app directory in the VM.

Despite using the Zend framework a lot, can’t say I’ve ever tried Zend Studio. Is it based on Eclipse? If so, I’d be inclined to leave it and use one of these lighter editors. And who needs extensive autocomplete anyway? That’s what var_dump is for :-D

Reply from Jerry Carter

Jerry Carter — Thu, 31 May 2012 11:15:22 -0500

Thanks, Jake. My interest is likewise renewed with the knowledge of MAMP. Makes me think I'll give it a go as an education tool for me kiddos. They've more than mastered iOS already on their own.

Reply from Jake Howlett

Jake Howlett — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:34:19 -0500

Version Control? Wadat? ;-)

Reply from Chris M

Chris M — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:16:36 -0500

Was also going to say, of course you know where the live version of the source code is, in version control! :-)

Reply from Chris M

Chris M — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:11:13 -0500

Hi Jake, ever thought of using VirtualBox to run your LAMP environment. Comes with the added satisfaction of being the same OS as your target environment and with snapshots you can rewind if you found you've broken your setup. You'll need a beefy developer pc but I think it's worth it!

Reply from Sean Cull

Sean Cull — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:01:05 -0500

I do struggle to spell it ;-)

Reply from Jake Howlett

Jake Howlett — Thu, 31 May 2012 07:52:16 -0500

Is there anything you don't know about Domino licencing Sean?

Reply from Jake Howlett

Jake Howlett — Thu, 31 May 2012 07:51:56 -0500

I'd imagine Zend Studio is the best choice if you make a living out of PHP dev (does anybody?), whereas Coda is just fine for us hobbyists.

Reply from Sean cull

Sean cull — Thu, 31 May 2012 06:59:59 -0500

I have been using http://hetzner.de for dedicated servers. They are cheaper than Vps servers and the support seems ok

I tried Vps servers 2/3 years ago and they were too flaky then. Also you can't run some domino licences on Vps - not that that is a worry here.

Reply from Roman Kopac

Roman Kopac — Thu, 31 May 2012 05:43:59 -0500

Zend Studio is an overkill for simple sites, but it has project-wide autocompletion and function browser (Ctrl+click on a function and it opens its declaration even if it is in other file). Coda 2 also lacks a PHP debugger. When you don't need these features, Coda 2 may indeed be the most polished IDE.