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Developer Guide: Setting Up Eclipse PDT

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gboudreau edited this page Sep 13, 2010 · 20 revisions

Eclipse PDT is a free, cross-platform, full-featured PHP IDE that offers class browsing, code formatting, and method completion.

Set up Eclipse PDT to work with ThinkUp

  • Set indentation to spaces: To easily generate code that complies with ThinkUp’s indentation-by-spaces style (as per the Code Style Guide), in your project’s preferences panel, under PHP>Code Style>Formatter, set the “Tab Style” to spaces, and indentation size to 4.
  • Add word wrap: Insane but true: Eclipse does not support word wrap natively. Use this experimental add-on to enable it. (via Stack Overflow). Once the plugin’s installed and you’ve restarted, right-click on a file and select “Virtual word wrap” to enable it.
  • Show whitespace: See whether you’re using tabs or spaces; go to Window>Customize Perspective and under Editor Presentation check off “Show Whitespace Characters.” A button will appear on your toolbar that you can press to show spaces and tabs.
  • Set your author name: In Preferences…>PHP>Code Style>Code Templates, expand Comments and choose “Types.” Click the edit button to set what the @author tag auto-fills when you’re commenting your code.
  • Show a max line length ruler: In the Preferences>General>Editors>Text Editors. Check “Show print margin” and enter the max line length (currently 120 as per the style guide).
  • Run regression tests in Eclipse: Here’s how to install the SimpleTest plugin in Eclipse to run tests in the IDE. (Note from Gina: this plugin doesn’t work on my Mac or PC; when I choose “Run as>SimpleTest” nothing happens.)
  • Install Mylyn plugin for Github: If you want to browse and update issues in Eclipse, install this plugin
    Server: http://github.com/ginatrapani/ThinkUp
    Find your GitHub API Key in Account Settings under the Account Admin tab.

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