Tools for every PHP developer

Tools are often neglected areas when it comes to tutorials. Perhaps for the sake of brevity required infrastructure details are often ignored. Here are a quick set of resources that should be part of PHP developers toolbox.

5 Tools Every PHP Developer Should Master
This blog post by Cal Evans provides a comprehensive summary of the 'must have' tools. Particularly important is familiarity with source control systems such as CVS, SVN and Git. One should also be familiar with how to create patches for

• SVN
• CVS
• Git

Issue Trackers: An indispensable development tool
Issue tracking systems are a life line when working with a team of developers. The post by Chette Soriano provides a good and simple overview. Within Kenfuse you should check out the issue tracking system for projects which is a minimal setup for managing issues. Some of the popular open source tools are Trac, Mantis, Jira and Bugzilla.

PHP Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
IDEs are matter of personal choice, but having familiarity with one can be very handy. Eclipse PDT provides a good alternative. Also many a times developers would need to work or modify code on remote systems through SSH shell. For such cases, familiarity with vi is a must.

A bunch of other utilities
Most often php project deployment includes setting uploading code to remote servers. Developers should therefore be familiar with regular FTP commands. Other often used tools are SFTP and SCP. If the project involves working with databases such as mysql, tools such as phpMyAdmin can be very handy.