Currently I'm using eclipse kepler as my IDE. Are there any better/more flexible IDEs available?
Best IDE for Magento Development
development
Related Solutions
I use vagrant, git and some build script on phing. The vagrant machine run database and web server, git used locally to track changes in my extensions and build script used to update /var/www directory on my vagrant machine (well actually it used everywhere where i need to build an environment).
Phing
Probably most interesting part is phing, which work like modman + composer for me. It has few targets defined including build, setup and install.
The build target download certain version of magento (specified in build config) from internal webserver and extract it into build directory. Then run other targets which setup permissions for files and cleanup the cache. Then it create symlinks to all files in the source directory. In result I get all files ready to use in my build directory. If magento core files already in build directory it skip downloading and just update symlinks, so I use this target to rebuild environment everytime I need to update symlinks. For vagrant machine source directory is in /vagrant/src (shared folder) and build directory is /var/www.
The install target download and import database dump for certain magento version. Then run setup target.
The setup target just create a local.xml file with all settings.
In my company we use unit testing and CI tools, so this way to build a magento environment allow us to test our extensions on different versions of magento, and run it with and without installing.
I have created a "shortcut" on vagrant machine which simplify access to build. For example to rebuild project I need just type vagrant ssh -c magebuild and it's automatically run phing in /vagrant directory.
Then I have assigned this command to certain key combination in my PHPStorm IDE and now I can rebuild project just by pressing Alt + B in my IDE. But since I use symlinks it's not really often operation.
Vagrant
A box for vagrant it's my own box with Ubuntu 12.04 on board, it's actually just standard precise 12.04 with all software preinstalled + shortcut and some configuration. In vagrant file I put just port forwarding settings, private network to be able to use xDebug and put build shortcut to provisions.
GIT
In git I track only my extension files, build.xml for phing and Vagrantfile. So everybody who want to create an environment can just clone repository, and run vagrant up. Then he will get VM up and running ready to work. All this process takes 1-2 minutes. If you want to build project locally (without using VM) you can run phing build install.
To develop any module or customize the code you need to understand the structure of magento.
- It explains about the step by step guide for module development and structure of magento
https://www.multidots.com/step-by-step-guide-for-magento-module-development
- It explains about custom module development
https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/magento-custom-module-development--cms-20643
- This is one of the best one for the beginers
Best Answer
PHPStorm is the IDE of my choice because it is really fast. It indexes fast, it searches fast and it starts fast.
And there is a plugin: magicento.
Have a look on the feature set it offers. It helps you a lot in the daily work.
PHPStorm with magicento is the only IDE i know of, which can handle really well large projects (which magento projects tend to) and offers a really huge magento magic functions support.
PHPStorm is NOT free.