Blog of Max Horvath

Saros: Distributed Pair Programming Plugin for Eclipse

2009-08-21T23:33:22Z

Recently on the TYPO3-5 Mailing-List Eike Starkmann wrote about his master thesis project called Saros:

Saros is an Eclipse plugin for collaborative text editing and distributed pair programming, i.e. it allows two or more developers to work together in real-time on the same files. It is similar to Gobby, SubEthaEdit or Google Docs but focuses on programming in Eclipse.

He summarizes the advantages of using such a plugin:

Projects can benefit from Saros because I think it brings many advantages to Open Source Software development:

Distributed Pair Programming is like a live peer review. This should help with finding good design, get rid of bugs, increase readability, etc.
Transferring knowledge should be easier to do when more than one person look at and work with the same code. This should also help to give new developers an introduction to the code.
In contrast to screen sharing, Saros only shares your actions inside of Eclipse with regards to the project you are both working on (think privacy) and you are still independent to explore the project on your own.

Saros can be useful in the following contexts:

Working on complicated problems in the code
Performing code reviews
Debugging
Code presentation
Code sprints
Introducing new developers to the project
...

There is also a screencast avilable which demonstrates the features very well.

Programming for iPhone using Linux or Windows

2008-10-31T15:05:22Z

Development for the iPhone is provided by Apple for Mac OS X exclusively. There are several reasons to do it like that - the most important one would be that iPhone OS Frameworks are all available under Mac OS X.

Those of you who would like to play around with iPhone development under Linux or Windows can now follow a tutorial published by IBM on how to use the Eclipse C/C++ Development Toolkit (CDT) to program native applications for the iPhone. This way you can write iPhone applications by using Eclipse IDE on Windows and Linux, too. The only requirement is that you need a jailbreaked iPhone.

As a conclusion I can say that it's quite complicated and by far not as fluent as developing on the Mac OS platform (e.g. Simulator is missing) - but those wanting to experiment on with the iPhone SDK on Windows or Linux will find this tutorial a useful resource.

I kindly mirrored the tutorial on my webserver - you can download it here ...

Eclipse PDT 2.0 release postponed

2008-08-26T10:01:36Z

As expected by many, Eclipse PDT's next major release has been postponed.

While two milestones couldn't be released, it became clearer and clearer that the release date of September 15th 2008 couldn't be met.

On December 29th 2008 Eclipse PDT 2.0 will hit the street

There is one milestone and two release candidates planed, before the final version is being expected to be released on December 29th 2008.

Personally I don't mind the delay, as PDT 2.0 will include many improvements to the current version:

PHP Model Infrastructure
Mark Occurrences
Type Hierarchy View
Override Method Annotation
New PHP Explorer capabilities
Extended Open Type
Code Templates
Code Assist for Dynamic Variables

One of the other reasons I see for delaying PDT 2.0 (hey - they bumbed the planned 1.1 release to 2.0) is a huge internal API change, also introduced because of the switch to Eclipse DLTK (Dynamic Languages Toolkit - a tool for vendors, researchers, and end-users who rely on dynamic languages).

Well, at least chances might be good they will include (at least a basic) Phar support.

Call for proposals of requirements for a complete support of Phar archives in Eclipse PDT

2008-08-18T11:28:40Z

As PHP 5.3 is marching towards the final release, Eclipse PDT's next version needs to support its new features. Two major additions to PHP 5.3 are namespaces and bundling the Phar extension. Especially used in combination, libraries could/should be distributed like Jars in the Java world.

The Phar extension provides a way to put entire PHP libraries or applications into a single file called a "Phar" (PHP Archive) for easy distribution and installation. Phar archives are best characterized as a convenient way to group several files into a single file. As such, a Phar archive provides a way to distribute a complete PHP library or application in a single file and run it from that file without the need to extract it to disk. Additionally, Phar archives can be executed by PHP as easily as any other file, both on the command line and from a web server. Phar is kind of like a thumb drive for PHP applications.

PHP 5.3 and Eclipse PDT 2.0 will soon hit the street

With Eclipse PDT 2.0 to be released in September (or October) support for namespaces is already on the roadmap. Support for Phar archives has not been listed, yet. But in my opinion Eclipse PDT 2.0 must support handling Phar archives when PHP 5.3 will hit the street.

Playing around with PHP 5.3 HEAD and Eclipse PDT 2.0 HEAD I've discovered several drawbacks of the yet missing support for Phar archives - here are the most important ones:

You cannot browse Phar archives.
Because of the disability of Eclipse PDT 2.0 of browsing Phar archives you cannot see in the outline which classes are inside of the Phar archive.
You cannot debug Phar archives. (Eclipse won't open a Phar archive.) (Using Xdebug or Zend Debugger does not change the situation.)

Debugging Phar archives using Xdebug is still an issue with the current stable release (Xdebug won't return enough information to browse the Phar archive), but Derick is already working on solving that issue. I didn't try the Zend Debugger - I don't even know if it runs with PHP 5.3.

Requirements for the Phar support are still to be defined

So opened an feature request at the Bugzilla issue tracker of Eclipse PDT. Roy Ganor, the team leader of the Zend Development Tools Group, responded quite fast and said, that the development team of Eclipse PDT already talked about the support of Phar archives but couldn't decide on requirements.

He asked me to help out and define proposals for requirements in a PDF file or the Eclipse PDT wiki.

Before providing proposals for requirements of the support of Phar archives for the next version of Eclipse PDT on my own, I wanted to ask the PHP community (especially those using Eclipse PDT / Zend Studio for Eclipse), what kind of Phar support they would like to see in Eclipse PDT 2.0.

Please do not hesitate on responding /commenting on this article, as there's not much time left before Eclipse PDT 2.0 shall hit the streets - and I wouldn't like to miss Phar support in this great IDE.

How to enable the Xdebug debugger in Zend Studio for Eclipse

2008-08-15T07:52:10Z

Zend Studio for Eclipse is a commercial edition of Eclipse plus the PDT plugin and various other additions. Unfortunately Zend decided to disable the Xdebug support of the Eclipse PDT plugin. Nonetheless if you'd like to use Xdebug for debugging your PHP scripts, follow these simple steps to restore the Xdebug functionality of Eclipse.

How to enable Xdebug support

First you need to quit Zend Studio for Eclipse if it is still running.

Got to your Eclipse folder, for this article for instance /usr/local/ZendStudio:
cd /usr/local/ZendStudio.
Enter the plugins folder (i.e. /usr/local/ZendStudio/plugins):
cd plugins.
inside the plugins folder create a new folder named disabled (i.e. /usr/local/ZendStudio/plugins/disabled):
mkdir disabled.
Now move all files starting with com.zend.php.debug into the disabled folder:
mv com.zend.php.debug* disabled.
Go back to your main Zend Studio for Eclipse folder and start it via:
./ZendStudio -clean.
Xdebug is available in the main preferences dialog under PHP Debugging.

If you're working on Windows or Mac OS X, the procedure is likewise - you just need to remember the differences on the command line.

Conclusion

In order to get Xdebug working you now need to setup your computer like it is required for Eclipse PDT. Your can find the manual at http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/documents/XDebugGuide.pdf.

The only drawback is that profiling via the Zend Debugger doesn't work anymore in Zend Studio. But for this I would suggest to use Xdebug and KCacheGrind.

How to enable the Ant plugin in Zend Studio for Eclipse

2008-08-11T12:34:34Z

Zend Studio for Eclipse is a commercial edition of Eclipse plus the PDT plugin and various other additions. Unfortunately Zend decided to disable the Ant plugin in it's distribution of the Eclipse platform. Nonetheless if you'd like to run Ant scripts or simple Phing scripts it would be really useful to be able to use the Ant integration of Eclipse.

Preparation

First you need to make sure that the Eclipse Java Development Tools are available in Zend Studio for Eclipse.

From the Help menu click Software Updates > Manage Configuration.
Check for the entry Eclipse Java Development Tools.

If the entry is not listed or disabled, you need to install the Eclipse feature.

From the Help menu click Software Updates > Find and Install.
Click Search for new features to install.
Check Europa Discovery Site and click Next.
Select Java Development Tools and click Finish to install the feature.
Restart Zend Studio for Eclipse.

How to enable the Ant integration

Now it gets a little tricky.

From the File menu click New > Project.
Check Show All Wizards.
In the Wizards text field enter Ant, select Java Project from Existing Ant Buildfile and click Next.
You will be asked to enable Ant Development - confirm with Yes.
Now you can cancel the new Java Project - Ant has been activated.