Xoke.org

I am using PHP at work and figured I should make notes for myself.

1. On Ubuntu, you can use the tasksel command, however I have found that removes other programs if you’re not careful (e.g. setting up a server removes some of the desktop side apps).  Set up a LAMP server on a desktop with sudo apt-get install php5 mysql-server apache2
2. Eclipse is really nice as it tells you errors when you code. PHP, when broken will generally show a blank page which is really not useful.  sudo apt-get install eclipse-platform installs the generic version (not the java specific, although it’s fairly simple to change).
3. Once Eclipse has installed you need to install the PHP specific stuff.  Run eclipse as root with sudo eclipse and thenhelp->install new software to get the list of plugins.  Which are none, because apparently there is no repo.  Addhttp://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo/ to get the list.  Search for PHP and install the programming language one (the other didn’t work for me, even though it looks like the same thing!)
4. If you are working on a remote server (as I am at work) then you should probably install the RSE plugin which allows you to SSH to another server to edit files there.
5. When it asks if you want to restart (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!) I recommend you DO NOT!  Simply because we’re running as root which is bad.  Just close it down and run it as a regular user, which completed the restart anyway.
6. Then you need to set up the instance for PHP, which you can do by creating a new PHP project and it prompts you.