Testing Eclipse Indigo

I’m primarily developing PHP on a Ubuntu system with the Eclipse IDE. Even if the startup is slow, the performance is not really amazing and the Galileo-version drove me nuts with annoying null-pointer-exceptions – I like Eclipse. Maybe it’s just a spleen like a mechanic who always use the same screwdriver or the painter who’s using the same brush – as long as Eclipse is not breaking down my workflow I’ll continue to use it.

Recently I’ve tried the actual Indigo release and it seems quite stable. No problems with installing plugins, startup speed acceptable. I’ll try Indigo for the next weeks in production – with a working Helios as backup ;-) – and will post my experience after a while.

Every time I’m checking a new Eclipse release I try to reduce the number of plugins and only install additional features if I really need them. So I guess this list will expand over time.

I’m testing Eclipse Indigo with the following plugins:

• PDT
  The base plugin for PHP coding. I’m using the latest release from http://download.eclipse.org/tools/pdt/updates/3.0/milestones/
• Marketplace
  Really a nice feature. The marketplace-concept makes it very easy to hit required plugins or check out interesting stuff.
  Open “Help > Install New Software…” and select the standard Indigo repo. Search after “market” and you’ll get it.

Actually now nearly everything can be installed by using “Help > Eclipse Marketplace…”

The Marketplace is tightly integrated into Eclipse

Plugins continued:

• PathTools
  Simple and effective context-menu to switch to the terminal or the file-explorer into a given folder.
• Zen Coding
  Nice script to make especially nested-html-coding much easier.

Let’s see which plugins I’ll add – sooner or later.

Do you have any suggestions about usable but not overloaded plugins to use for PHP/Webdevelopment in Eclipse?