My OperaPHP, PDT, Smarty ... why can't it just work?
Friday, May 9, 2008 5:50:42 PM
For those who know my technological work, I'm an errorphobe. I don't like it when things throw errors, give warnings ... I like everything to think everything else is just dandy, and have my software get on. Zero reported errors makes for a happy Jeff.
So, when one of my IDEs throws a false positive error and I can't convince it to ignore said error, I get a bit miffed. PDT, the PHP Development Toolkit is a fine piece of software, built on the Eclipse foundation. It highlights errors and warnings in PHP and HTML with a nice level of accuracy and some fairly detailed descriptions, but it fails completely to support Smarty.
Smarty, for those not in the know, is an intermediary between PHP and HTML, kind of like a sub-scripting language to aid in presentation. It doesn't support complex logic, but has support for iteration, filtering, and a nice plugin system for handling repetitive display work. It also includes compilation support, and possibly the one thing I love about it most, it enforces code separation. Smarty doesn't interact directly with all of your PHP code, you have to define interfaces.
One of the GoogleCode projects a while back was SmartyPDT, a plugin for the PDT which supported smarty templating and such. This project was a fair attempt, had nice features, but didn't address the 'false positive' error problem. Even worse, it's now a dead project it seems, not having been updated for many months ... and finally, it doesn't work anymore. The latest versions of Eclipse, the PDT and the Java Runtime Environment seem to have thrown it a curveball, and the software just refuses to function unless you go retro.
So, all in all, I'm sitting here, working on one project in particular, and sifting through a list of 288 false positives which are all down to this silly little thing.
Todays debate, should I learn something about Eclipse plugins and try to fix this myself, or just live with it. Option #3, should I get a new IDE? Answers to these questions, and many more, at some undetermined point in linear time.
So, when one of my IDEs throws a false positive error and I can't convince it to ignore said error, I get a bit miffed. PDT, the PHP Development Toolkit is a fine piece of software, built on the Eclipse foundation. It highlights errors and warnings in PHP and HTML with a nice level of accuracy and some fairly detailed descriptions, but it fails completely to support Smarty.
Smarty, for those not in the know, is an intermediary between PHP and HTML, kind of like a sub-scripting language to aid in presentation. It doesn't support complex logic, but has support for iteration, filtering, and a nice plugin system for handling repetitive display work. It also includes compilation support, and possibly the one thing I love about it most, it enforces code separation. Smarty doesn't interact directly with all of your PHP code, you have to define interfaces.
One of the GoogleCode projects a while back was SmartyPDT, a plugin for the PDT which supported smarty templating and such. This project was a fair attempt, had nice features, but didn't address the 'false positive' error problem. Even worse, it's now a dead project it seems, not having been updated for many months ... and finally, it doesn't work anymore. The latest versions of Eclipse, the PDT and the Java Runtime Environment seem to have thrown it a curveball, and the software just refuses to function unless you go retro.
So, all in all, I'm sitting here, working on one project in particular, and sifting through a list of 288 false positives which are all down to this silly little thing.
Todays debate, should I learn something about Eclipse plugins and try to fix this myself, or just live with it. Option #3, should I get a new IDE? Answers to these questions, and many more, at some undetermined point in linear time.
Unregistered user # Thursday, July 17, 2008 10:56:13 AM