hi,
1) I've just added Drupal as project in eclipse Helios (PHP development) and I get 100 warnings about the code. Is there something am I missing ? Or it is just normal ?
2) I'm actually wondering if this is a good idea to develop my drupal website, I could also use a simpletext editor together with devil module to print variables.. what do you suggest me ?
thanks
There isn't a best way to develop, what to choose is very dependent on taste, needs and habits.
You can do a lot of fancy things very eclipse, like looking up documentation based on the source code, step by step debugging and more. Even with all of this, I don't use eclipse. Using the Apache error log along with devel to print or log debug information works great for me.
So just find out what works great for you and stick with it.
Eclipse is a powerful tool when it comes to working with larger applications. If you are just developing a standard Drupal web site, you might even get by without touching PHP, so Eclipse is just not necessary. However, if you are developing modules or doing heavy modifications to existing PHP templates, then Eclipse can become very handy.
While a text editor is perfect for a single file, Eclipse has the benefit of "understanding" the project around it. For example, you can find jump to function or class declaration.
If you are doing serious PHP development, you might want to consider nWire for PHP. It is a commercial code exploration tool for Eclipse that analyzes your code and assists in finding your way through it. It is a great tool for diving into complex projects.
I use Eclipse for Drupal development and find it works great. The way that I find works well is to create a project per site. Which points to the /site/my.site directory of a Drupal installation.
I then set up a library in eclipse to point to a clean install of Drupal, so the autocomplete still works for the standard Drupal functions (if eclipse is having a good day). It also means that you will only pick up warnings and annotations for your code.
I have also recently started pointing eclipse help at the Drupal api site should I need further documentation. (you can do this in advanced settings of search scope set up a scope with a URL template of http://api.drupal.org/api/search/6/{expression})