Attempting to go from PHPEd to Aptana

Question

I have used PHPEd for several years as my IDE of choice. It is fantastic and fast, but still doesn't have native support for git. I need to use git, and I want it integrated into my workflow.

I have heard great things about Aptana - including that it has great git integration, so have installed it and I am now trying to get my head around all the differences.

1. What is with the workspace being linked to a folder? In PHPEd, the workspace is simply a collection of projects. It's not tied to a location in the filesystem, apart from where the .ppw file which stores the workspace meta information is stored.
2. Similarly why are projects tied to a particular folder? In PHPEd a project is not 'tied' to a particular location in the filesystem. Yes, the project has a root folder defined, but it's simply a property of the project. This means there are no project related files (metafiles?) cluttering the filestructure of the project source files. Can Aptana be made to behave in this way?
3. Connections - The connections are similar, but the way projects reference them is not. In PHPEd I have a connection for each remote server I use. Then in a project I can specify a remote root folder relative to the connection - this allows me to have one connection used by multiple projects if they are all published on the same remote server. Can Aptana behave like this? Or do I have to define a separate connection for each project?

4. What is the best way to create a project from an existing source? I like my local file structure to mirror the filestructure on my host machine. This allows for easy moving of folders, easy synchronisation, allows me to syncronise browsing in Filezilla etc. So my work directory will look something like this:

   /www
       /dev_html
           /development <- this is the root of a development subdomain
           /test <- this is the root of the last build being tested in the test subdomain
       /intra_html <- contains the root folders of various intranet subdomains
           /crm
           /kb
       /public_html  <- this is the live site
   

   Now, I really don't want to point Aptana at these folders and have it add it's metafolders, but I don't want to have Aptana replicate these folders - introducing another shard. How can I create projects that point to these existing files? I know this is related to my second question, but is there a way to have Aptana keep these local files up-to-date if it has to replicate them locally?

5. What is the best way to integrate with git if I want to be able to easily upload to the remote host? PHPEd handled this with a simple keyboard shortcut - Ctrl+Shift+S - which would upload to the remote server immediately, but there was no support for git. I have a remote repository (bitbucket) which is separate from my remote host. I was hoping git integration would make it easy to have both immediate upload to my development environment, as well as the ability to easily commit once everything is working as I want.

Part of my issue is that the terminology in Aptana is not really intuitive (to me, coming from PHPEd) and is not very well explained. If I want to add a framework folder for code autocompletion, is that an 'External Directory' under the 'PHP Buildpath' tab? And what is the PHP buildpath?

In summary, I want to have a local file structure that mirrors the hosting file structure, I want to be able to very easily syncronise local files to the host, and I want to be able to easily stage and then commit those files I haveedited once I have tested them on the host. Is all this possible with Aptana? Or do I need to go through the massive pain of integrating git with PHPEd?

Answer 1

Try tortoise git, you will have the same kind of integration like you had with tortoise svn. And you cannot use PHPEd's debugger with Aptana, I have used both Xdebug & PHPEd's debugger and I can tell you that Xdebug is crap compared to PHPEd. I don't work for NuSphere but they have absolutely the best PHP debugger.