Phing, Xinc or phpUnderControl - which one will last?

Question

I am still looking into which one of these tools I should use. When I was poking around I noticed none of them really have any new releases:

Xinc
Version 2.0.1 released 02/05/08
Phing
Version 2.3.3 released 12/07/08
phpUnderControl
Version 0.4.4 released 08/09/08

Should I choose phpUnderControl because it had the latest release and development will probably be continued? I don't want to have to switch in half a year just because some feature that comes with php 5.3 can't be handled by one of them.

I would need PHP Unit, SVN and Codesniffer support.

Answer 1

Xinc looks to be a more active than phpUnderControl, which hasn't released for almost a year. But as with everything in life, the future is uncertain, what appears to be stable and active today, may not be so tomorrow.

Answer 2

Phing actually looks pretty active ...

http://phing.info/trac/timeline

Answer 3

At work, we asked ourselves about the same question last year, considering our needs are :

• Something quite easy to set up ; a few command lines are OK, if you just have to copy/paste without thinking too much (goal : someone who doesn't know Linux well must be able to install the software)
• Integration of
  • PHPUnit
  • phpDocumentor
  • PHP_CodeSniffer
  • SVN log + automatically build when things are committed
• Ability to handle some rather big projects
• Something "sexy", with graphs and all that, for our clients to see

We chosse phpUnderControl. Couple of arguments that I remember :

• pro : quite active project (there where new versions really often)
• con : JAVA ; means harder for PHP developpers to modify / adapt
• half pro : PHPUnit and phpUnderControl are a bit close (same hosting, if I remember well) ; we considered if was a good sign that the project would live ^^
• pro : easy to set up ; even the first time (we were a couple of guys who tried ; generally no problem)
• pro (subjective) : more sexy than xinc

We are now (more than) a year later, and we don't regret our choice... Let hope we'll still feel the same way in another year or two !