PHP Development Tools


PHP Development Tools is a language IDE plugin for the Eclipse platform and the open-source project that develops it.
The project intends to encompass all tools necessary to develop PHP based software. It uses the existing Eclipse Web Tools Project to provide developers with PHP capabilities. All these PHP tools are easy to use and developers can speed up the development process by using these tools. Additional plugins are available as PDT Extensions.

Key features

PHP editor

Debugging and profiling

Primary modules

The project officially began around March 8, 2006. By the end of 2006, the project was approaching the 0.7 release. On April 6, 2007, 0.7 RC3 was released as the final 0.7 version.
In the latter half of 2007, a series of 1.0 milestones were reached, and on September 18, 2007, PDT 1.0 Final was released.

Naming issues

The PHP Development Tools project has had two names during its development. It was initially named PHP Development Tools, then changed to PHP IDE, and reverted to PHP Development Tools on January 1, 2007. Various documentation and reviews use either name.

Zend Technologies contributions

Significant PDT development is being done by Zend Technologies. Zend sells a competing product named Zend Studio. PDT, as free software, may cannibalize sales of Zend Studio although the latter has more features. Others contend that PDT is deliberately maintained as a "lite" version of Zend Studio.