Posted by darren oh on February 20, 2009 at 6:33pm
Last updated by darren oh on Thu, 2009-07-23 13:55
Last updated by darren oh on Thu, 2009-07-23 13:55
An installer that provides a completely configured Web server, database engine, IDE, and Drupal site would help new developers get started more quickly and encourage more users to contribute to development. The goal of this page is to design a trouble-free, cross-platform installer.
Three IDEs support all the features of Drupal: NetBeans, Eclipse PDT, and Aptana. PostgreSQL for Windows includes Application Stack Builder, which can install and configure Apache and Drupal.
- Allow user to choose versions of Drupal and contributed modules, themes, and profiles.
- Check out selected code from CVS.
- Aptana and Eclipse PDT strip CVS info from subdirectories whose source repository differs from the main project repository.
- Give user the option of setting local or remote site URLs for current code base.
- For each URL, allow user to choose Web server and database engine to use.
- Helps users create code that is portable across Web servers and database engines.
- Might also want to provide a choice of PHP configurations.
- Install or configure Web servers, database engines, and IDE.
- Set up version control and database backups for site.
- Aptana and Eclipse PDT cannot support CVS and SVN in the same project.
- Add site as project to IDE.
- Give user the option of manual or automatic installation.
- Provide suggested next steps with the option of opening the site in browser or IDE.
- Provide local debugging and automated deployment for remote site.
- Aptana cannot handle closing PHP tags in multi-line comments (http://support.aptana.com/asap/browse/PHP-147). Update: This will be fixed in Aptana PHP 1.1.
- Aptana and NetBeans allow breakpoints to be set in JavaScript files, so JavaScript and PHP can be debugged simultaneously.
- For any page, provide WYSIWYG theme development in IDE.
It would also be good to include support. For example, ask users to register their Drupal user names to keep track of issues and projects, and help them get on appropriate IRC channels.