Using Eclipse editor

I'm in the middle of a project created using CakePHP framework. I have been using notepad++ all along until now I am deciding to use Eclipse. The reason I like about notepad++ is its agility and simplicity. I tried opening eclipse today creating a new PHP project--it all seems more complex and complicated, I wonder what are the drawbacks if I changed in the middle of the way, to use Eclipse on my existing project. I also see there are some meta files along with misc. files automatically created when we start a pr开发者_StackOverflow中文版oject, does it mess up with the existing files? Ecplise prompted and asked to send data when we opened it, I wonder if that affects the privacy of our project.

Any advice related to the problems addressed would be appreciated. Thanks.

Best regards,

John Maxim

You could try Aptana 3.0. It's basically Eclipse optmized for PHP. Eclipse is a very configurable general IDE, but it can be daunting for new users, and there will be much functionality that you won't need.

Doing PHP with Eclipse is best with PDT (PHP Development Tools).

I use it with symfony and it's pretty good.

By default it does code completion, folding, syntax highlighting, bracket matching. If you use CVS you can also integrate that into Eclipse.

If you use XDebug or Zend Community that is also able to be integrated.

EDIT: Eclipse doesn't mess with your files, it adds three things to a normal PHP project (.settings folder, .buildpath, & .project). All of which are easy to remove and there are no lingering files/folders from Eclipse in your code.

Also, about security, I believe it just sends usage statistics, none of the code that you've written. But I'm not completely sure about this.

Another option is to try NetBeans.

I also used Notepad++ for all my work until a few months ago when I decided to give NetBeans a try. I had already tried it and Eclipse in the past but they both seemed to be too heavy for what I was doing. However, the most recent release of NetBeans worked out perfectly for me and has given me a great boost in productivity.

It does everything that I needed it to do and isn't as heavy as Eclipse, at least based on my limited experience.

I would suggest you give PHPStorm from Jetbrains a try. It's simpler than Eclipse or Aptana but much smarter than notepad++.

It's got code completion, source control integration (HG, Git, Subversion, etc.) Deployment setups that handle file copy, FTP, etc. I've switched from Dreamweaver to PHPStorm and haven't looked back.

There's a 45 day trial and the price is very reasonable. ($99 for personal license) Also, version 2.0 is imminent and packs a TON of new features.