Today I installed NetBeans 6.5 Beta, after many years using Zend IDE for PHP development. I download NetBeand with PHP pack only. NetBeans 6.5 start up was much faster than Zend, and working with NetBeans was very smootly. Both IDE’s running under Java platform, but Zend is lazy in comparation with NetBeans IDE.

NetBeans is open source, free and you can download NetBeans pack you need. If you developing only php then you don’t need Java or Ruby pack. But if sometimes you want to extend NetBeans, you don’t need to download new package, just extend it with plugins. I might extend my NetBeans with UML pack, because i want to create UML diagrams when analyzing projects.

What i liked the most?
NetBeans have support for Version Control and developer collaboration. You don’t want that your team member overlap someone else codes, do you? You can choose between CVS, Subversion, or Mercurial subversion control systems, i using CVS. You can connect on CVS with pserver, ext, local and fork authentication protocols.

Line based diff viewer wil show you new, changed and removed code lines. You can compare two files, file from repository and your local file side by side.

You can see local history, and roll back into older file version any time if needed. All changes are saved into file history while you developing. Continue reading →