Linux IDE For Web Developers? 33
bethorphil asks: "I'm a web developer at a company that concentrates on Coldfusion and Javascript for our applications. I've managed to subvert my workstation to the point where I'm using Linux 80% of the time, yet I'm still stuck with windows for certain aspects of development which are too time consuming without a nice IDE. I need FTP and RDS support integrated into the editor, and it would be nice if javascript debugging were available too. I haven't had much luck running ColdFusion Studio or Dreamweaver through WINE, and VMWare is too expensive. Several of my coworkers have expressed an interest in this too, so I'm pretty sure that a week after I find the right setup, the whole development team will blow away their windows partitions and join the rebel forces... :-) Does anyone have any suggestions?"
Re:EMACS is an IDE (Score:1)
What ekthtenthible language, Lithp? I hate Lithp with a pathion. I only uth thee. I wanna know what bathtad thought that the word 'lithp' should have an eth in it. It pitheth me off!
Err, what? (Score:1)
You did know they were a Cold Fusion shop when you were hired, right? Which means NT or maybe Solaris. So what's the problem here?
ftp is integrated into emacs (Score:1)
I'm not quite sute what you mean by FTP support integrated into the editor but emacs has nearly everything in it, including support for FTP (ange-ftp) and web browsing. Somehow I doubt whatever you're working on will be viewable in a text web broswer though.
Use uservfs (Score:1)
Try Visual Slickedit. (Score:1)
Re:VMware too expensive?!? (Score:1)
I agree that it would be a trivial expense. It would even be cheaper to just buy the thing than to pay for the time taken for a developer to argue the case! But management and bean-counters don't seem to view the world rationally.
Have you tried WebSphere? (Score:1)
They've ported it from Windows using Wine. Unfortunately, to guarantee that the libraries will remain consistent they needed to distribute their own wine libraries (Doh!). They've also chosen to distribute as RPMs. Not really a big deal, but it can be annoying for those of us who use Debian.
The downside is that it costs $69 (which doesn't seem too bad to me) and of course it is closed source (but then, so are your other GUI options). There's a 60 day trial available for download so you can see if it is suitable before buying it.
Re:Quanta! (Score:1)
Re:Testing my security (Score:1)
You have it the wrong way round (Score:1)
Raw and powerful (Score:1)
...pretty much every language I use for web development.
You get the best of both worlds... You don't have to remember the tags, or have to continuously look things up, and at the same time you know exactly what you are doing.
You can use the Beautify tool to make sure everything is properly nested... It indents nested tags just like indented blocks of code in C... so you can instantly tell when you have a <Atag> <Btag> </Atag> </Btag> situation.
It will automatically bring up the page you are editing in the browser of your choice too. It is completely cross-platform. I go back and forth between Windows and Linux without thinking twice.
I use the same tool to write my Java Servlets, and with a quick Ctrl-M (and a little help from the Ant tool from the Apache-Jakarta project) and my (complex) project is created, and deployed to my test environment. Any errors that are reported show up an an 'Output' window, where I can double click on the file name to jump to the source. Whenever library source is available, you can have Visual Slickedit 'tag' the files. I can move my cursor to any Java function or class and hit Ctrl-. to jump to the source (which includes the comprehensive documentation with java)
You can open a file on an FTP site as if it was local, and when you do File, Save it does the PUT. I use this constantly to make quick updates to web pages that were originally created with Front Page.
It integrates beautifully with CVS and MS Visual Source safe... even better integration than in Visual Studio in my opinion.
When it comes to Javascript debugging... you _really_ have to try all sorts of different browsers on different platforms (Damn that Mac OS9.0) Still, with the Browser integration, it is effortless... I gleefully pay the $100 / year or so to keep up with the latest releases.
Don't bother with the eval... just pay up.
Re:VMware too expensive?!? (Score:1)
VMWare express [vmware.com], US$79.00. You can only run Win9x, and it can't be from an existing partition.
As for the Windows license, he already has one, since he is already dual-booting to use the windows tools he needs to.
You only need the full workstation product if you need one of the additional features like WinNT/2k support, or booting from raw disks.
VMware too expensive?!? (Score:1)
How can VMware be too expensive? US$79 for a version that will do what you want on linux. If a company can't afford to buy you that, how can it afford to pay your salary?
I mean, dreamweaver 4 costs US$299 per license, coldfusion US$495. If the company is complaining about another $80, when you are definitely billed out at more than that per _hour_, something is messed up.
Jason PollockKonqueror (Score:1)
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Re:one factor is code testing in a browser (Score:1)
I do believe I will look into the VMware alternative though, if anyone could be nice enough to let me know if it is stable and what the pro's and con's are I would appreciate it.
I could free up another box then, maybe put that new mandrake on it.
-Mark
Re:EMACS is an IDE (Score:1)
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
yeah, just crack vmware (Score:1)
Just go to someplace like astalavista.box.sk [astalavista.box.sk] a search for "vmware 2.0.3 linux" to find a crack for it. :-) oh, and forget vmware if you have less than a 450 Mhz processor and 128 meg of ram.
Or if you don't want to be an evil warez dood, just use something like vim/emacs for code editing. If you don't use raw code for sites anyway, well, linux ain't the OS for you. The JS debugging thing y ou can sort of mimic by turning on the javascript console in Netscape (javascript:console as a url in 4.x, maybe the same way in mozilla)
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News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
Re:yeah, just crack vmware (Score:1)
the only problem with sarcasm is that most people are too stupid to understand it
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News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
Re:yeah, just crack vmware (Score:1)
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Various Options (Score:1)
Of course you are right, if you have some really hairy Javascript to debug, you need to do it in the Netscape Javascript Debugger - the MS one is the biggest pile of toss on the planet. Now why can't Netscape release it for Linux? Anyway, my solution is to run VMWare - yes, it costs dosh, but it more than pays for itself over having to have a separate Win box. One option you could try, is to set up one big VMWare server and have everyone who needs Windows connect to it. Or a Citrix box. Or something else that can serve Windows over the network. I do tend to agree that using Dreamweaver and suchlike is fine for beginners, but once you really start doing twiddly bits, you have to get in and edit the code by hand, so you might as well write it by hand from the start. YMMV.
Re:EMACS is an IDE (Score:1)
From the page
" MMM Mode is an emacs add-on package providing a minor mode that allows Multiple Major Modes to coexist in one buffer. It is particularly well-suited to editing embedded code or code that generates other code, such as Mason or Embperl server-side Perl code, or HTML output by CGI scripts. It is written and maintained by Michael Abraham Shulman
I guess that it's probably possible to find (or hack) something to use it with PHP.
Re:one factor is code testing in a browser (Score:1)
Javascript is a completely different story. I usually end up doing my initial Javascript coding and checking/debugging in Linux/Netscape. Eventually, I turn things to Windows and use IE, because the Javascript can be interpreted completely different. Mozilla still doesn't run some Javascript properly, and I'm sticking with JavaScript 1.1.
Re:yeah, just crack vmware (Score:2)
Supports everything but DirectX from what I've heard.
You forgot a few things:
Don't get me wrong, I use it every day as I believe it is faster than VMWare and I can customize my screen size (960x768 gives me my wharf on the right side). The networking hack is very poor and its biggest flaw, IMO. It would have been MUCH better just to emulate a network device and require a seperate IP for the guest like VMWare. I get no Network Neighbourhood, no ICMP and flaky TCP/UDP. DreamWeaver's FTP client crashes under Win4Lin.
Don't tell me to use Samba and mount under Linux. That's hokey as hell and doesn't solve some of my Windows Networking problems.
Win4Lin also uses the host filesystem (the windows filesystem is just a subdirectory). This is great and terrible at the same time.
Bluefish (Score:2)
I have been using bluefish [openoffice.nl] for some time now, and I am very impressed. Although the authors says it is not finished yet, I have had no problems using it, it is very stable, and feature packed.
Cut n' paste from their web page:
FEATURES:
Re:Bluefish (Score:2)
komodo (Score:2)
Personally, I believe emacs is still the best choice of an editor, IDE, and all the other stuff you need in this situation.
All your event [openschedule.org] are belong to us.
Quanta! (Score:2)
v2.0 is supposed to have some IDE features, as opposed to v1.0 which is basically just an HTML editor very much like Cold Fusion Studio. Although v2.0 is in the release candidate stages, I haven't had had time to try it yet. I dunno if it will include any Javascript debugging features.
I doubt it can be made to work with RDS... but I have used it successfully in the past to work on Cold Fusion sites hosted on NT servers, by using the smbmount utility included with Samba to mount a share on the remote NT server.
I highly recommend that you check it out.
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Re:RDS (Score:2)
RDS (Score:2)
StarOffice (Score:2)
one factor is code testing in a browser (Score:2)
Basically, NS 4.x is so different from the most commonly used web browser (IE of course) that testing the site with the browser you're clients will be using may well be what keeps you on win32. In addition to the obvious and extremely large differences in the DHTML arena, NS and particularly NS on linux just render shit differently. If your site designs are to a very tight tolerance in terms of appearance, this could become a huge pain in the ass.
Then again there is vmware to use IE. Or run it under wine. Or have the graphic designers/user interface designers stay on windows while the middle/back-end code monkeys move to linux.
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News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
EMACS is an IDE (Score:2)
- "one-button" compilation,without moving your hands off the keyboard
- integrated debugger (of your choice)
- integrated source-browser (for instance, the id-tools: mkid, gid, aid, lid, etc).
- integrated FTP (ange-ftp)
- integrated web-browsing
- fully extensible using a widely-known language
- integrated source-control (rcs,cvs,perforce,cml,whatever)
It may not be point-n-clickity, but you're a programmer for god's sake, not a luser. Bite the bullet, face the learning curve, you'll be a better geek for it.
Win4Lin (Score:3)
Win4Lin Pluses: Cheaper and Faster than VMWare.
Win4Lin Minuses: Must patch the kernel (or install patched kernel from RPM)
VMWare Pluses: Can run OSes other than Win9X in VMWare Pro (e.g., Linux on Linux to test installations). No kernel change required.
VMWare Minuses: Slower than Win4Lin and more expensive.
I use Win4Lin now, mainly to check pages in IE. My IDE of choice is Emacs.