Aptana PHP Plugin discontinued?

[ckoenig]

Hi there...

I wonder if the Aptana PHP plugin development will be continued or not, as on the Aptana Studio Website (http://www.aptana.org/) under the section "Ruby on Rails, Python and PHP" the PHP link leads to the Eclipse PDT project...

Any comments?

Regards, CKoenig

[byarts]

FYI: I have asked a similar question about the php plugin:
https://aptanastudio.tenderapp.com/disc ... php-freeze

It appears that no answer from Aptana, is the answer.

-Rb

[imageaid]

I have asked the same as well (also with no response).

I can tell you that the RadRails installer (Aptana RadRails Stand-alone, that is) does not offer the Aptana PHP plug-in. Instead, it provides the opportunity to install the Eclipse PDT plug-in for PHP development. I'm trying to hold out hope that Aptana won't discontinue the PHP plug-in but it doesn't look too good from both their silence and the lack of the PHP plug-in in RadRails Stand-alone.

[munkt0n]

yeah, what's going on? someone must know.

[pnlarsson]

I hope they will continue the development of this really good PHP Plugin. But no news are normally not good news. What has happen to aptana as a company?

[sgibly]

Hi guys,
For the past few weeks we were considering a discontinue of our PHP plugin, as we now believe that it might be best for all if we will contribute to the Eclipse PDT instead of maintaining our own code base.
In time, and with collaboration with the PDT team, we hope to push some of our features into the PDT project and also make sure you will still be able to use the Studio with integrated PDT in it.
We believe that our joint effort, and the latest infrastructure changes in the PDT project, will produce a better product for the PHP developers community.

This was not an easy call, as we put a lot of efforts in this plugin to bring it to the state it is today.
We hope you'll understand and endorse this change.

Best,
Shalom Gibly
-Aptana

[imageaid]

Thanks for the reply Shalom. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't incredibly disappointed with the decision and, more importantly, Aptana's lack of openness in terms of communication. I'd say if you're going to drop something from your website or link to a new system, a la the PDT plugin, it'd be nice, as a loyal user and customer, to get some details from the company.

I certainly hope there's a lot of the Aptana codebase going into PDT b/c PDT is not an enjoyable plug-in IDE with which to work.

Is there a timeline for when we can expect PDT to work with Studio (it currently works with RadRails but not Studio due to other conflicts)?

[pnlarsson]

Will you drop all support for Aptana's PHP Pluging?
Ie fixing bugs etc?

I went from Zend Studio to PDT and finally found Aptana - and it was by far the best and stabled (not crippled to not compete with zend studio).

Well the plugin still works and will be used until PDT reaches what Aptana is today - which may take some time. But i will miss the joy of testing beta, with new nice features etc.

But if you can get the best of Aptana into PDT and continue to work on PDT - that will bring a strong PHP plugin for eclipse.

[Floydian]

I don't want to discount the concerns already posted, so with that in mind, here's my thoughts:


I think this is a good thing. There were two seperate groups of people developing Eclipse PHP plugins and now there is one. This can only lead to faster development and more efficiency. For instance, PDT already has php 5.3 capability. Apatana would only have to reinvent that wheel if they continued on with the Aptana plugin.

I think that by taking the leap past coding php 5.3 support into Aptana PHP, a lot of wasted time can be reclaimed and used for furthering the cause.

So I'm very optimistic about this. I am currently using PDT (for my php 5.3 development, still using zend 5.5 for everything else) and so far it's alright. php 5.3 support is fantastic, but it still has that damned problem with being stingy on ftp (I can't even get it to work). The problem I had with aptana php, pdt, zend >= 6, netbeans, nusphere and any others I've tried is that you can't just open an ftp file, edit it and save.

You have to make a project, you have to sync it, you have to do this, that, and the other thing, and then you can do an edit. It's just not convenient for me. Hence, I use zend 5.5 a lot. But with php 5.3 looming, I have no choice but to move on. PDT suffices for now, and I'm highly optimistic for it's future. I hope it's ftp (or lack thereof) gets better.

Cheers

[ckoenig]

In time, and with collaboration with the PDT team, we hope to push some of our features into the PDT project and also make sure you will still be able to use the Studio with integrated PDT in it.
We believe that our joint effort, and the latest infrastructure changes in the PDT project, will produce a better product for the PHP developers community.

Thanks for the clarification. Question I have here: will there be an active effort by Aptana to push features from the Aptana PHP Plugin (APP) into PDT (i.e. will someone of your staff work on that)? I'm asking that, as otherwise if there is no one directly assigned to that task (might also be someone from the PDT community), the idea of porting features from APP to PDT might end in talk...

[nielsz]

Aptana is great because it just works.
Install Aptana, select "PHP Plugin", install "Teamprise TFS Plugin", and you're ready to go.

I've spend 4 hours yesterday getting PDT in Aptana to work. But it just doesn't work. Problems with prerequirements and so on.

In the end, I've just installed the entire Eclipse+PDT package and i'm ready to go.
You really need to make this easier, because you've lost me and my developmentteam.

[autofocus]

Thats not good news for me atleast.

i am working on project which use smarty and pdt does not have smarty support.
another feature i will be missing is search function in outline, php elements etc.

it was great plugin.

please add best of both PDT and APP in one and make this merger as most powerful IDE for PHP

thanks

[exceptione]

Thats not good news for me atleast.

i am working on project which use smarty and pdt does not have smarty support.
another feature i will be missing is search function in outline, php elements etc.

it was great plugin.

please add best of both PDT and APP in one and make this merger as most powerful IDE for PHP

You shouldn't use Smarty, but anyways, there is a plugin for it: http://code.google.com/p/smartypdt/
The php-plugin from Aptana was limited with respect to pdt, so the integration of both worlds is a good thing.

[exceptione]

Aptana is great because it just works.
Install Aptana, select "PHP Plugin", install "Teamprise TFS Plugin", and you're ready to go.

I've spend 4 hours yesterday getting PDT in Aptana to work. But it just doesn't work. Problems with prerequirements and so on.

In the end, I've just installed the entire Eclipse+PDT package and i'm ready to go.
You really need to make this easier, because you've lost me and my developmentteam.

You got this IDE for free. I am in no way related with aptana, but this attitude frightens me. If there is something wrong, you should file a bug report. Or, you could also fix the code yourselves, if your are capable to. It's open source and free.

[Floydian]

You got this IDE for free. I am in no way related with aptana, but this attitude frightens me. If there is something wrong, you should file a bug report. Or, you could also fix the code yourselves, if your are capable to. It's open source and free.

Actually, some people paid $100 for a pro license. I considered doing so, but there were key problems (IMHO) with the php plugin (like a heredoc bug that took about a year to fix) that put me off from chipping in with some bucks.

If I had spent the c note, I'd be one very unhappy customer. Luckily I didn't lol.

Anyways, exceptione, I don't know how you can assume who has or hasn't paid for a pro license...