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jEdit Is My New IDE
I recently installed jEdit. I have been using Zend Studio Client for about a year now and and have grown restless - I am also pretty sure that it is not free software. Anyhow, it was not providing me with the features that I needed. It was great for PHP, but I wanted something that encompassed all of the languages that I use. jEdit is available for most operating systems and comes with an easy to use Java based installer.
Personal Installation
At the time of this post I am using the 64-bit version of Fedora Core 6. The major prerequisite for jEdit is a Java runtime. I currently had the i386 version of JRE 1.5 installed for my 32-bit browser. I downloaded and installed the 64-bit JDK 1.5. After installation, I set up this version to be my default:
[root@localhost ~]# alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/jdk1.5/bin/java 2
[root@localhost ~]# alternatives --config javaI then chose the new JDK version.
[root@localhost ~]# java -version
java version "1.5.0_11"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_11-b03)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 1.5.0_11-b03, mixed mode)Plugins
The great thing about jEdit is its Plugin Manager that lists, downloads and installs available plugins. I needed only a few options to make this IDE worthwhile. My main problem with other IDEs I had tried was the lack of FTP support - which makes web development a laborious task. The FTP plugin solved this. After installation, I docked it to the left and the beginnings of an excellent workspace. After reviewing the available plugins, I selected and am testing the following:
Note: When I began writing this post, I was using jEdit version 4.3pre9. After a few days use, I became fed up with an FTP issue that causes network operations (save, open, etc.) to take an excessive amount of time. I found a patch that was available but didn’t want to mess with it, so I downloaded and installed version 4.3pre8 and am not experiencing that issue anymore.
Topics: Linux, Open Source
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Does it offer debugging like Zend Studio does with Zend Platform (line by line, step in/over, breakpoints, etc)?
Not that I am aware of. I always found that Zend Studio was a bit of an overkill for what I needed and it did not provide me the support that I needed for other languages. I rely upon the errors that the PHP server provides me for debugging. Since JEdit is free, you can try it and see if it works for you without worry.
And no, it’s not free. It costs $299: http://www.zend.com/store/software/zend_studio
That was a great motivator for me to try something different.
I have been using jEdit for years and it too was my php-ide for about 1 year. It is indeed great for general file-editing. I still use it on a regular basis for quick notes (hooray for buffers) and it’s powerfull search/replace features. And not to forget, it’s java, so it’s cross-platform. I highly recommend it to every developer.
But for specialized php development though you should also give eclipse a testdrive. Together with the following plugins it makes a great ide for php:
- PHPEclipse: this is not the Zend-plugin for eclipse!
- csseditor: old, but still works like a charm
- JSEclipse: It’s publisher interakt was bought by adobe, but atm this plugin is still free, you only need to register at adobe.
Google those names and you will find the plugins. Apart from the css-editor you can can download them through the update-mechanism in eclipse, just add ‘update site’ to the search terms.
It takes a bit of time to get used to the eclipse-way (and some of it’s quirks), but if you get into it, you’re able to use a top-notch IDE-platform that supports various programming environments (a.o. C/C++, java, php). And like jEdit it’s also cross-platform.
At the moment I use eclipse as my main IDE for all my projects and keep jEdit on the side as a simple, but powerful text-editor.
I tried Zend Studio too, but I found it to be too specialized and generally unintuitive. The cost-factor also plays a role.
As for debugging features, although I am able to and have done in other languages, I never used it for php. Placing var_dump() and echo’s at key places, while turning up errorlevels and activating debugmodes works fast and efficient for me.
Anyway, in the end it all boils down to personal preferences, but just thought I’d mention the eclipse-alternative too.
Thanks hoc! I will give it a shot with those plugins, in the past I had some difficulties getting the FTP plugin to work the way that I expected it to (as it does in other IDEs).