Tools of the trade?
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TextMate for text editing and Firebug Profiler.
@bd_creations - If you’re on Windows You could try giving E texteditor a shot. You’ll find that you can install most of Textmate’s bundles.
You’ll have to find a decent FTP programme to make up for the lack of that functionality. But it’s a minor issue, checkout Lifehacker’s list of top 5 FTP programs.
My own setup on Mac (for those interested):
and of course tools such as Firebug, Parallels for Windows testing.
@Fazal do you only use versioncontrol locally, and then install ensembles to deploy life? Or do you have git installed on your life projects?
Does anyone use private github for their life projects?
At Airlock we tend to use:
- Beanstalk for SVN repo hosting, Cornerstone or Versions
- MAMP locally on each developer machine
- if collaborating, connect to MySQL on a local server, otherwise local
- Sequel Pro for MySQL administration
- Textmate for code wrangling
- Transmit for the occasional bit of FTP/SFTP
Almost all of our projects are managed through SVN, and deployed directly to dev/staging/live environments with an svn update
command via SSH. Database updates are often handled with Database Synchroniser.
Extensions are either downloaded as zips or pulled in through git.
I must admit, I’ve never used an exported Ensemble beyond seeing what it does. For the type of work we do, it doesn’t provide enough control.
@nickdunn
So you didnt even bother adding the needed extension to MAMP to get zip working to create ensembles, because you don’t use ensembles…?
Yep.
Being just a small company of two people, we’re using Dropbox as our shared workspace environment. I’m using github only to publish extensions I made.
I am using E and FileZilla on my windows machines and my collegue is using Textmate and Cyberduck on his Mac. In most cases I use the XSLT-editor being delivered by Symphony but mainly because of those annoying file permission issues.
Same goes for debugging and profiling: I use the two devkits that are in the default ensemble.
Fazal: E can open FTP connections in the project pane. I just don’t find it very useful.
I use coda for editing and and ftping that needs to be done. Sometimes I’ll use cyberduck too.
Also for a great svn repository I use unfuddle.com, they are really awesome and I recommend them anytime that I can.
And MAMP as my lamp setup. It’s nice to turn it off and free up resources.
I mostly use gvim or macvim for editing (though I often try something else). Filezilla for ftp. And MAMP or simply the default lamp stack on ubuntu.
I use programmer’s notepad (win) and Filezilla, anything local is done via Wampserver
I’m on Ubuntu and I use VIM on the command line or gedit, both of which (with plugins) are capable of code snippets, code hints, syntax highlighting and lots of other goodies.
I work in ubuntu because it’s useful to code, develop and test on the same platform that I would deploy on. Setting up development locally, for staging and for deployment are all very similar that way and I get plenty of regular practise setting up sites and understanding the full LAMP stack from the apache config and log files through to PHP quirks and using MySQL all on the command line.
This is also why I’d recommend any developer to get a cheap VPS (I’d recommend slicehost, just $20 a month for the cheapest slice) because you learn to install and maintain a web server stack and the sites on it, from top to bottom. You can also use tools such as rsync to sync up between development/staging/live sites etc.
I use the following setup:
- Unfuddle for Git repository hosting
- MAMP or an OS X LAMP stack for local development
- Sequel Pro for MySQL admin
- Textmate for doing the business
- Transmit for FTP
- Capistrano for deployment
The basic process is to setup a single git repository for each project and ensure that any extensions are either tracked as submodules or included directly in the repository. This allows me to deploy quickly and easily via Capistrano (though I should point out that you can use Capistrano without git or SVN) which really just automates the process of:
- Checking out the release from our repository on Unfuddle
- Setting up symlinks, etc for configuration
- Archiving the last release (for easy rollback)
- Updating the database (if needed)
- Uploading any user created media (if needed)
I pretty well never use the in-browser editor for doing any work, and I’ve never used “Export Ensemble” for anything.
Wow, thanks.. that’s a great list of options.
To further elaborate on my workflow: I mostly code on pc with aptana, while checking on my mac for browser consistency. I also have aptana and textmate on my mac, but use those not so much. I edit directly over ftp, but have wamp just in case and use filezilla when needed. And I use firebug to ease all my DOM/css related questions.
The only thing what’s not in my workflow is svn/git I guess, although there are useful plug-ins available in aptana for that. I used to svn every project I did, but that got tiresome. I guess because I do most projects alone (but not all).
Excellent thread and much appreciated, as I am trying to get started learning more about xslt. I am trying to find tools to use on Mac OS X, and here are a couple for reference:
TextMate plugin:
http://ditchnet.org/texslmate/
TextXSLT (mac, for learning, seems like one of the author’s many side projects?):
http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/welcome.html#testxslt
EditiX (cross platform, seems pretty good, cheaper than oxygen):
http://www.editix.com/
MOSO xmplify (mac, beta, seems newish, very cocoa-looking):
http://xmplifyapp.com/
Oxygen (cross platform, seems huge and with great coverage of everything xml, is relatively expensive):
http://www.oxygenxml.com/
@rickcogley, please make your links clickable next time. Thanks!
Being a PC user, I still enjoy using good old Dreamweaver.
@Lewis, I was just looking up the markdown syntax to do it. They are now clickable, but what happened? Did you convert them, or is that automatic?
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I’m wondering if my workflow can be improved perhaps. Right now I’m using Aptana Studio 2.0 to edit all symphony goodness from ftp which works well. Altough Aptana hasn’t got any advanced xsl editing features.
And for the rest i’m using the plain old ?debug window for now, altough I do have the Firebug Profiler installed.
So which tools are you people using?