White Paper:

Team Development with Zend

Studio for Eclipse

Technologies

January 2008

© 2008 Zend Technologies, Ltd. All rights reserved.

 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Table of Contents
Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... 2

Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 3

Source Code Management ....................................................................................................... 4

Scenario 1 ......................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Scenario 2 ....................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Refactoring ..............................................................................................................................13

Code Gallery ............................................................................................................................14

Zend Platform Integration .....................................................................................................15

Task Lists .................................................................................................................................15

FTP / SFTP Connections ..........................................................................................................16

Summary ......................................................................................................................................................................... 17

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Introduction
PHP Development efforts generally start with a single developer or a small team with a similarly
small task. Projects tend to grow in both complexity and size as one good idea gets expanded
and enlarged into a web application.
As a project gains size and becomes more successful, development teams need to scale (or
should scale) to a larger number of developers at the same time. Further complexity often
arises as the application is deployed at many sites with different versions of the developed
product. One install may want special enhancements thus creating its own application branch.

The Problem
In order to grow business, a development company needs to increase both the number of
customer site installations and proportionately, the number of developers. Typical PHP
development efforts do not generally scale in both of these areas at the same time. However,
as your development team increases there are many aspects of development that should be
looked at more closely. Things like version control, team development environments, shared
code libraries, and common coding styles, just to name a few.
Many developers working on the same project can cause problems on a shared development
infrastructure since, as one example, an error introduced by one programmer has the potential
to ripple through the entire project. When something like this occurs all other developers may
need to suspend their work until the error is located and corrected.
In this paper we will be looking at the answers to the aforementioned issues within the context
of Zend Studio for Eclipse. We will be looking at many team development issues that can be
resolved by using this new Integrated Development Environment (IDE). We will be doing this
by posing common development scenarios and then discovering how Zend Studio for Eclipse
helps to alleviate the issues.

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Source Code Management

On a basic level of team development the use of Source Code Management (SCM) tools are
invaluable tools that really must be used for a development team to be productive in any way.
The two main SCM products on the market today are CVS and SVN (aka: SubVersion) Zend
Studio for Eclipse has integration architecture that accommodates both of these tools. The
ability to control who is doing what to a web application is paramount in a team environment.
There is nothing worse in this context than having a few days worth of development work
being over written by a co-developer. Locking files, having local development copies, updating,
and committing files in a controlled and managed process is the ideal approach and both of
these SCM software tools are very capable of providing this need. Also, to have this SCM
process integrated within each developer’s IDE is all that much the better. Now let’s look at
some situations that a software development team is likely to find themselves in.

Zend Studio for Eclipse also integrates with the source control product known as CVS,
however the SubVersion product is the focus of the SCM discussions in this paper.

Scenario 1
Your development efforts are ramping up for you next version of your web application. There
is a development server that has just been setup with Subversion (SVN) source control software
and your team of 8 programmers is about to start their coding efforts.

Solution Discussion
Before you start to write any code you should take the time to sit down with the entire
development team and plan your approach. Your main issue here is that of coordinating the
development of code among your entire team. You would certainly not want to have days of
work potentially over-written by another programmer who is not aware of the work recently
completed by a programmer in a different office. Luckily in this situation you have some source
code control software installed to assist with this process. In this example, the tool is
Subversion so we will see how Zend Studio for Eclipse makes use of this connection.

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Figure 1 - Establishing a Connection to an SVN Repository Server.

Now lets take a look at how Zend Studio for Eclipse integrates with SVN and allows your
programmer team to not get into each other’s way while performing their respective
programming tasks.
Zend Studio for Eclipse has a number of views that are specifically designed for working within
the SVN parameters. In fact they are collected into a designated perspective called the SVN
Repository Exploring perspective. The views in this perspective are primarily used to interact
with the repository itself and not the checked out versions that your programmers will be
working with on a day-to-day basis. The repository is the location of the protected source code
that you would normally interact with via the SVN commands of commit, update, and so on.

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Figure 2 - Browsing a Repository of Files

As you are establishing your connection to the repository of code files however, it is a good
idea to access this perspective and make your initial connections between the repository server
and your local copy of the development environment. To do this you would right-click on the
SVN Repositories view and select new from the pop-up menu. You will see a screen similar to
that shown in figure 1 where you will provide all your connection coordinates for the server
that the repository is being housed on. Once this connection is established you will see the
repository information displayed in the SVN Repositories view. Again this is just a display of the
protected source code in the repository itself, you can look at the files and even open them for
detailed review, but you cannot edit them directly here. The repository display looks like that
shown in Figure 2.
Once the connection to the repository is established you can then create an SVN Project and
checkout your own files from the repository to make your own working copy. Then you can
begin to work in your own environment and as code segments are completed you can commit
them to the repository.
We will take a look at how to do this a little later, but first lets see how the over all SVN
environment can be managed with the help of the Zend Studio for Eclipse preferences. If you
click on Window then Preferences in the menu system you will be taken to the interface where

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

you can control all the settings of Zend Studio for Eclipse. Specifically in this case, there is a
tree segment called Team and under that option is one called SVN. Here you can control many
aspects of how Zend Studio for Eclipse will interact with the SVN environment. This is shown in
figure 3.

Figure 3 - SVN Preferences Window

There are a lot of options here to look at but we want to focus on just one of them here in this
paper. The item of note here is that of the Comment Templates. This feature allows the
developers to establish and use a pre-defined block of text that can be used each time code is
committed to the repository. This makes for standard and uniform comments that everyone on
the development team can read and understand. A sample Comment Template is shown in
figure 4 and its subsequent use in the commit process is shown in figure 5.

Figure 4 - Creation of a Comment Template

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Figure 5 - Using the Comment Template when Committing a File to the Repository
Now to get back to the checking out process of the files from the repository and creating your
own working copy we will set up an SVN project at the same time. This process is best
performed in the PHP perspective, so if you are following along with this paper, switch back to
the PHP Perspective and select new from the file menu and then select Other from the resulting
menu. This will open the New project wizard and from here you simply open the SVN tree item
and select “Projects from SVN” to begin the process. After selecting this option the wizard takes
you to the check out screen where it will display all the SVN repositories that it knows about
and has valid connections to so that you can choose which of them you want to make your
working copy out of. Once you select the source of your files to check out and name your
project, the actual checking out of the files begin. Figure 6 shows the checkout process under
way.

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Figure 6 - Checking out Files from a Repository into a Working Copy

Now that you have the files into your working copy your programmers will be able to do their
local work on the project. You should be aware of some other views when you are working on
an SVN sourced project within the PHP Perspective. First, Zend Studio for Eclipse knows that
you are using the SVN repository so it opens up the console view the first time you perform an
action that interfaces with the repository (like a commit).
Console View - This view is merely the display area where all the SVN activity output is shown.
When you do a commit for example you should see something like the following in the console
view:

*** Commit

svn commit "C:\Documents and

Settings\Pbmacintyre\Zend\workspaces\DefaultWorkspace\Paladin-
bs.com_paladin\index.php" -m "Date:

Project: Paladin Web Application

Programmer: Peter MacIntyre

Task:" --username "peter"

M C:/Documents and
Settings/Pbmacintyre/Zend/workspaces/DefaultWorkspace/Paladin-
bs.com_paladin/index.php

Transmitting file data: C:/Documents and

Settings/Pbmacintyre/Zend/workspaces/DefaultWorkspace/Paladin-
bs.com_paladin/index.php

Committed revision 3

*** Ok (took 00:01.266)

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

As you can see the Comment Template that was defined earlier is used here as well. Other
views that you should be aware of are: History, Synchronize, and SVN Annotate. Lets take a
quick look at these views and see what they provide to the developer.
NOTE: to open a view simply click on the window, show view, other menu sequence and the
list of all available view will be displayed. Some of the above mentioned views are under the
SVN tree and some are under the Team tree.
History View – If you click on the right-mouse menu while focused on a file in the editor and
select Compare With, then Latest from Repository, you will be switched over to the history view
with a new tab also opening in the editor view. What this process does is connects to the
repository and performs a line by line comparison with the file that is in your working copy and
the same file that is in the repository. Then Zend Studio for Eclipse shows you the results of this
comparison in the editor view area and at the same time displays some historical statistics in
the history view. A typical screen of this process is shown in figure 7.

Figure 7 - Results of the Compare with Repository Request.

Synchronize View - This view is used to help maintain the up-to-date status of the files that
are in your working copy. You can use it to verify that your working copy has the most recent
changes that are committed to the repository. If one programmer has been working on a file
and now its your turn to do some work, it is this process that you should run before you start
doing your own changes. To start this process simply right-mouse on the file in question and
select Synchronize with Repository from the Team menu.
SVN Annotate View – This view works hand-in-hand with the History view. Here you can
select an item of a files lineage from the History view and with the right-menu option of Show
Annotation you will be shown a listing of all the revisions that the file in focus has undergone.
You can then jump between “versions” of the file and view that code as it looked during older
revisions.

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Figure 8 - Team menu with SVN Command Options

You have probably already found all the commands that are typical with the SVN software like
Commit, Update, Lock, and so on. These are all accessible from the Team menu after a right-
click on any file in either the code editor or the PHP Project Explorer view. The pop-up menu
with all its options is shown in figure 8.

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Scenario 2
Many developers are now working on your third version of a successful web application. There
are 2 teams of developers, one team of 8 is in London, England and the other team of 12 is in
Toronto, Canada. The two teams are 5 hours apart and have to work on the same code base
that is housed on a development server at your head office in Phoenix, Arizona, USA that is
another 2 time zones west of Toronto.

Solution Discussion
Apart from all that you have learned about SVN in the previous scenario discussion, there are
still more team development features available in Zend Studio for Eclipse. Once you have
established a connection to the Source Code Management server (remember both CVS and
SVN are supported) from within Zend Studio for Eclipse your developers can begin the process
of version control and checking out and committing their work to the development server.
This ability alone can add so much stability and control to the development effort.
There are a lot of other team development options available to you within Zend Studio for
Eclipse. Let’s take a look at some of them now to see how they can be employed as part of the
local network development effort.
In the establishment of the Zend Studio for Eclipse development environment on each
developer’s machine you can use the export/import wizard to great advantage. As one
example, you can set up an entire development environment and have all the system wide
preferences exported so that all the developers can have the same development environment
(at least on the outset). You can even add that file to the SVN repository of the project so that
any changes that are made over time can be committed and used by the whole team.
As another example if you are in the process of debugging a segment of code you can export
your breakpoints and send them to the development team, then have the same debug
processes run through by the entire team just by having them import the contents of this well-
formed XML file into their individual IDEs. Figure 9 shows the first window of the export
process.

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Figure 9 - Exporting Breakpoint for Team Consumption

Refactoring
Refactoring is another great way to synchronize code throughout a development process.
Refactoring is a great tool in Zend Studio for Eclipse and is really a glorified search and replace
tool that can be used within a single file or throughout an entire project. For example, if one
version of code has a function called row_color that is globally called row_shade, you can use
the refactor tool to accomplish this. Figure 10 shows the offered results of the refactoring
process.

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Figure 10 - Refactoring Process

Code Gallery
The last local development tool that we can look at is called the Code Gallery. This tool is not
directly involved in team development processes, but it can certainly help with the creation of
a repository of code libraries that your development team can use. Once a segment of code (a
function or a class for example) has been written and tested it can be included into the local
code gallery for team use and access. As well the code gallery can be expanded to a server
level location for access from anyone who has the right credentials. The advantage here is that
good tested code can be used across projects as well as across developers in the same project.
Another great feature of the code gallery idea is that Zend has a code gallery of its own that
you can access at any time and you can also submit your own code for possible inclusion into
the global gallery. Figure 11 shows the code gallery creation screen and its controlling view in
the background.

Figure 11 - Code Gallery Entry Creation & View

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

Zend Platform Integration

Zend Studio for Eclipse also has some valuable integrations with other Zend products. The one
to look at in the context of team development is Zend Platform. This is a Zend product that can
be installed on a cluster of servers for either development or production purposes. This
product sits on top of the web server (Apache) and monitors all the server’s activity that is
generated. With this monitoring tool in place you can have it send emails to anyone when an
error occurs. However there is a summary of all the server activities kept within Zend Platform
that the developers can navigate to and review at their leisure. Zend Studio for Eclipse has also
been integrated to allow for an interface connection to any Platform server. Figure 12 shows
this integration tool opened up displaying the web interface to Platform and the list of the
most recent events that occurred on that server.

Figure 12 - Zend Platform Integration Display in Zend Studio for Eclipse

The usefulness here in the context of team development is that anyone on the support or
development teams can access this interface and proceed to resolve any of the issues within
the code base. As well if you right-click on one of the line items within the Events view you will
have the options to look at the code in question, run a profile against the code, or to begin a
debug process.

Task Lists
The last Zend Studio for Eclipse view that should be mentioned in the context of team
development is that of the task list manager. Although this is not necessarily directly
employable by a team it can be used very effectively for individual programmers within a team
to manage their own list of things to do. The tasks list view is part of the general PHP
development perspective and should be noticed on almost any basic perspective. It can be
employed to keep track of any reminder items that the programmer wants to track. The tasks
can be tied into a code file or just kept as a general item to be done. If it is tied into a code file
then all the developer has to do to bring it into focus is to double-click on the task and the code
editor will automatically open the connected file.

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 White Paper | Team Development with Zend Studio for Eclipse

FTP / SFTP Connections

Finally there is one other major tool that can be used in the development of systems by
remotely situated programmers. The feature of coding through an FTP connection can
certainly be used to answer the key issue that was posed at the beginning of this second
scenario. You can start an FTP type of project from within Zend Studio for Eclipse and have the
IDE connect directly and continuously to that server while your programmers are coding
against the project files. This is another method that can be used to keep your projects in one
location no matter what the time zone and it also keeps them in one presumably safe and
secure location.
When all the above aspects of Zend Studio for Eclipse are used in concert, they will certainly
help the coordination of the development process to run smoothly. It is assumed however, that
your developers will all be using these tools and helps, and will be consistent in their
application. Therefore it is certainly important to have your entire development team all in
agreement with the use of not only the Zend Studio for Eclipse IDE, but also the consistent use
of the tools and features that are available.

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 Summary
Naturally the full implementation of SCM software will be the biggest piece of any multi-
developer team and it will be up to each development shop to determine which tool to use
and how it should be implemented. There is a lot of research available on the web about both
of the SCM tools that Zend Studio for Eclipse is compatible with, so be sure to select the one
that best suits your shop.
Keep in mind that the larger the project that your development team deals with the more
integration with tools is desired. With Zend Studio for Eclipse having so many of these team
development features all in one IDE solution, it makes sense to take a good hard look at
implementing this product throughout your enterprise.

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