There are many users developing for drupal on windows based platforms who need a good, customisable IDE for their coding. Unfortunately, programs like Dreamweaver don't adhere to drupal's coding standards and are difficult to customise. A handbook page describing how to properly install and configure a good quality IDE specifically for drupal would be a major help.

This task is to create a handbook page which describes all the steps a user needs to take in order to install the eclipse IDE and begin developing for drupal, creating/applying patches, maintaining modules/themes etc.

  • The page will need to list all of the pre-requisites and provide links for downloading them.
  • It should be a step-by-step guide including screenshots.
  • You will need to spend some time reviewing the eclipse IDE to determine the best configuration options to set.

The task is complete when the handbook page has been reviewed by a member of the documentation team.

Estimated time: 2-3 days.

Resources:

http://www.eclipse.org
Eclipse PHP Development Tools Project
Developing a Module on a Windows System

Comments

webchick’s picture

webchick
she/they
Primary language English
Location Vancouver 🇨🇦
CreditAttribution: webchick commented
Status: Active » Needs work

I +1 this task idea. Would be valuable for sure.

I think we need a little bit more work done on the scope, though. "determine the best configuration options to set" is a bit too vague. Maybe a list of specific checkpoints to hit such as:

* Syntax-highlight PHP code, including .module files, etc.
* Adhere to indentation/coding standards.
* Setup step-through degugger
* How to roll a patch
* How to apply a patch
* Other?

Also, no need to specify an estimated time.. all tasks are 7 days now.

ff1’s picture

ff1 CreditAttribution: ff1 commented
Status: Needs work » Needs review

OK. Here's a revised task description:

There are many users developing for drupal on windows based platforms who need a good, customisable IDE for their coding. Unfortunately, programs like Dreamweaver don't adhere to drupal's coding standards and are difficult to customise. A handbook page describing how to properly install and configure a good quality IDE specifically for drupal would be a major help.

This task is to create a handbook page which describes all the steps a user needs to take in order to install the Eclipse IDE and begin developing for drupal, creating/applying patches, maintaining modules/themes etc.

  • The page will need to list all of the pre-requisites and provide links for downloading them.
  • It should be a step-by-step guide including screenshots.
  • You will need to spend some time reviewing the eclipse IDE to gain a good understanding of the various configuration options.
  • The page should recommend configuration options to enable the following features:
    • PHP/HTML/CSS/Javascript syntax highlighting for all file extensions used in drupal core (.module, .info, etc.).
    • Indentation, <?php tags etc. in line with the drupal Coding Standards.
    • CVS integration, enabling the user to checkout drupal core, roll a patch and apply a patch.
    • A step through debugger.

    You do not necessarily need to explain each of these features, just setup the environment such that a user could use these features without having to carry out additional installations or configuration of the IDE.

The task is complete when the handbook page has been reviewed by a member of the documentation team.

References:
Drupal Coding Standards
http://www.eclipse.org
Eclipse PHP Development Tools Project
Developing a Module on a Windows System

A follow-on task could be to write a second page of the tutorial which explains how to use the Eclipse IDE to check out drupal core, apply a patch, create a new module, debug the code, check it in to CVS, create a release, roll a patch, create a new release, etc. But I think all of this is out of scope of the current task.

aclight’s picture

aclight CreditAttribution: aclight commented
Status: Needs review » Needs work

This is a good idea, but I think there is already a handbook page at http://drupal.org/node/75242 that does all or most of what you specify here. There is also a separate page at http://drupal.org/node/157609 about configuring debugging.

Let me know if I'm missing something here and this task really is different from what's already in the handbook.

ff1’s picture

ff1 CreditAttribution: ff1 commented

Wow, thanks Adam. I'd completely missed those pages. A simple search at http://drupal.org/search/node/eclipse yields many pages.

I'd say the pages could use some TLC though:

* Sift through all the pages/comments to pick out the settings that work in the latest eclipse version.
* Add screenshots to all steps of http://drupal.org/node/75242 and http://drupal.org/node/157609.
* Add a tutorial with screenshots on setting up the XDebug PHP debugger as described at http://drupal.org/node/147267. This will give users 2 options for a debugger. Also, the XDebug install works with the basic PDT setup, but the Zend tutorial requires a completely separate install.
* Bring the pages together in the handbook to form an eclipse IDE series.
* Provide links to related handbook pages, including eclipse CVS stuff at http://drupal.org/node/22296.
* Provide links to the series from related pages.

In short, I think there is still a task here. What do you think?

aclight’s picture

aclight CreditAttribution: aclight commented

I agree that the pages need some work. I recently got a new macintosh and I thought I'd try using Eclipse as an IDE. I spent about a week trying to get Eclipse IDE set up to work with degugging, but never quite got it working right. A nice, updated tutorial would have been helpful, I think.

With Eclipse, it seems like there are several distributions, and often it was not completely clear to me whether certain instructions were targeted to particular distributions, or whether they would work with any distribution. You might want to pick a certain distribution for the student to use for this task.

I'm also a bit worried about how the tutorial (mostly the debugging part) will work with varying WAMP (or similar) configurations. I think including instructions on setting up Apache, etc. is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but that will have some impact on the specific instructions given to get XDebug to work.

Since we both believe there is still a good task here, go ahead and write this up into a task according to the guidelines at http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/wiki/Ho.... As is, this is fairly close to a formal description, but not quite. Please try to limit the scope as much as possible so that the student doesn't get off track.

Also, it would be nice if you could create the specifications such that part of the tutorial could be applicable to multiple platforms, since my guess is that the Eclipse configuration itself is largely similar across platforms. There might already be tutorials or handbook pages about how to set up WAMP (or MAMP or LAMP), and how to set up CVS on windows. So keeping the tutorial as OS agnostic as possible, but mentioning settings that are Windows specific, would be ideal. We could review the tutorial primarily based on whether the instructions work on Windows, though, so we wouldn't require the student to have multiple platforms on which to test their instructions.

Also, are you willing to mentor this task?

Pasqualle’s picture

Pasqualle
Location 🇭🇺 Budapest
CreditAttribution: Pasqualle commented

I used this tutorial http://www.starbowconsulting.com/blog/tao/setting-eclipse-pdt-and-xdebug
to set up debugging with xdebug. it is quite outdated but still works..

Erik Seifert’s picture

Erik Seifert CreditAttribution: Erik Seifert commented

Here are 2 good starting points for have an complete Eclipse for PHP.

http://www.easyeclipse.org/site/home/
Eclipse distributions for various programming languages (java,php,perl) and operating systems (MAC,Linux,Win)
http://www.zend.com/de/community/pdt
Complete distribution for PHP Development (AllInOne) incl. XDebugger, Zend Debugger, PDT ( my favorite PHP Plugin for Eclipse ) ....

For those with smarty as template engine ( like me ), here a link to Smarty Highlighting in PDT (http://code.google.com/p/smartypdt/).

Hope this helps,
bye

geoff_eagles’s picture

geoff_eagles CreditAttribution: geoff_eagles commented

Might be worth just mentioning the alternatives to eclipse in the final document. phpdesigner is an excellent development environment and makes the task of debugging mixed javascript and drupal/php SO much easier - I know it's not free but it is VERY cheap and easy to set up (and you have a free trial period to decide whether you like it).

stoltoguzzi’s picture

stoltoguzzi CreditAttribution: stoltoguzzi commented
Title: Write a guide to setting up the Eclipse IDE for drupal development on a windows platform » PHPDesigner

any specials how to use it with drupal?
I'm looking for a good debugging environment.

VM’s picture

VM CreditAttribution: VM commented
Title: PHPDesigner » Write a guide to setting up the Eclipse IDE for drupal development on a windows platform

This title probably shouldn't have been changed.

Spiked’s picture

Spiked CreditAttribution: Spiked commented
Priority: Normal » Minor

On http://drupal.org/node/75242#PHPeclipse under "PHPeclipse (package)" the file extensions are enclosed in 's in stead of being italic.

Francewhoa’s picture

Francewhoa
he/him
Primary language French
Location Sept-Îles, Québec, 🇨🇦
CreditAttribution: Francewhoa commented

I wrote a how-to handbook at http://drupal.org/node/765120