PHP Development Tools

PHP Development Tools
Open Source / freeware tools to help with PHP development.

Debuggers and Profilers

- XDebug (recommended)
Excellent debugger and profiler extension.

- Advanced PHP Debugger
<snip/> debugger - does some nice stuff like <snip/>

- PEAR::Benchmark
Benchmarking and profiling tool written in PHP.

- DBG
PHP Debugger

Unit Test Frameworks

- Simple Test (recommended)
Excellent documentation, support for mock objects

- PEAR::PHPUnit

Documentation Generation Tools

- phpDocumentor (recommended)
Generates API documentation from inline source code comments (like Javadoc). Output can be "templated" and, in additional to generating HTML, PDF and CHM is also supported. Written in PHP

- PHPXref (recommended)
Builds "cross reference" documentation of source code allowing you to view all the files where a variable / method / function is declared as well as the locations where they are referenced. Written in Perl.

Build / Deployment Tools

- PEAR Package Manager (recommended)
Allows you to install PEAR packages (over the network) plus bundle your code for installation. Execute with the PHP command line executable to get started. Written in PHP.

- PEAR::PackageFileManager
Automates generation of package.xml files used by the Package Manager. Written in PHP.

- Phing
PHP build tool equivalent to Apache ANT. Worth investigating for large projects. Written in PHP.

- <snip/>
PHP-based installation wizard for professional release management of modular PHP applications.

UML and Design Tools

- Argo UML
UML diagram drawing tool with support for PHP stub generation (commercial spin off is <snip/>) - written in Java

- Umbrello UML
UML diagram drawing tool with support for PHP stub generation. Requires Unix / KDE

- Dia
Diagram tool with UML support - generate PHP using <snip/>]

- <snip/>
Generate PHP code from XMI documents, an XML format for describing UML

Accelerators

- Turck MMCache (highly recommended)
OPCODE Cache, script encoder, profiler and dynamic content cache (read persistance) all in one. Provides Windows binaries as well.

- PHP Accelerator (recommended)
OPCODE Cache



Recommended IDEs / Editors (a select few!)

- PHP Eclipse
Plugins for the Eclipse IDE

- PHP Edit
Perhaps the best free PHP IDE for Windows

- JEdit
IDE with PHP support (plus loads more). Written in Java so platform independent

- Jext
The siamese twin of JEdit

- JEdit
IDE with PHP support (plus loads more). Written in Java so platform independent

- gPHPEdit
Best(?) PHP editor for Gnome / Linux

- SciTE
Straightforward cross platform editor for pretty much anything.

- PHP Mode for Emacs
PHP support for the Unix EMACS IDE



Keywords:PHP Eclipse,PHP Edit,Argo UML,PackageFileManager,PHPXref,PHP Debugger,XDebug,Umbrello UML,Accelerators,OPCODE Cache, script encoder, profiler, dynamic content cache,gPHPEdit,Unix EMACS IDE

I suggest to add also free PHP IDE