Start up Web 2.0

CodeIgniter has spawned a fork called KohanaPHP (the forums can be found at KohanaPHP forums), it is in the initial stages of formation an initial release ready for download. Originally created under the project title BlueFlame, KohanaPHP’s first release is mainly some bug fixes for the well known PHP MVC Framework. KohanaPHP is a more community driven framework than CodeIgniter as EllisLab manage the development of CodeIgniter.

The fork was announced initially on the CodeIgniter forums but was not well received by EllisLab for the nature of their announcement and a argument quickly ensued which resulted in a number of posts being deleted and the thread closed as tempers flared and insults were thrown. The main points that EllisLab were aggrieved at where the use of their resources to promote, some copyright issues regarding the documentation and also the manner the fork was announced without any contact to the EllisLab team.

So what was the main reason of the fork?
The principle reason was that the lack of feedback and bug fixing that was present and the time between bugs being identified and an official release incorporating these fixes. Also the amount of influence the community had on further development of the framework. As EllisLab are sole developers of the framework they control the development, this has frustrated a number of developers who want to be able influence the design process and contribute code.

As EllisLab develop another commercial PHP framework ExpressionEngine their time has been spent in further development of this CodeIgniter has been neglected of late, especially with regarding bug fixes.

What does KohanaPHP have to offer that CodeIgniter doesn’t ?
At the moment there isn’t much difference as this is very much early days. KohanaPHP has officially released version 1.0 and has fixed the bugs identified by the CodeIgniter community with the unofficial fixes.  KohanaPHP will be community driven so developers frustrated with development cycles can get involved.

What does this fork effect CodeIgniter and their community?
Well that depends on a number of things but Rick Ellis (CodeIgniter Author) addressed the problems behind the slow release cycle and bug fixing. In summary Rick states that CodeIgniter has been created based on a large portion of ExpressionEngine and the strain in maintaining two separate has put on his small development team so to alleviate this ExpressionEngine 2.0 which is currently under development will be using the CodeIgniter libraries which will help make development more efficient and will enable EllisLab to more rapidly maintain the code and also develop new features, so as ExpressionEngineis developed so is CodeIgniter.

This is good news for CodeIgniter as this will enable a increased development release cycle and will also be good for EllisLab in that they will also benefit from bug identification and fixes from the CodeIgniter community and vice versa. The only negative slant on this that CodeIgniter will continually to not be a community driven project.

KohanaPHP on the other-hand will be completely driven by the community as a number of the more active contributors to the forum will be helping drive KohanaPHP rather than contributing to the CodeIgniter community.

Is KohanaPHP compatible with CodeIgniter?
At present both frameworks are compatible and in the short term KohanaPHP will be maintaining backwards compatibility with CodeIgniter. As both frameworks develop on different paths it will be interesting to see the where they go and what are the benefits of each.

What are the new proposed features to be added for KohanaPHP?
KohanaPHP has announced the new features that are going to be in KohanaPHP 1.1.

• ORM Active Record Models
• Cascading resource loading
• Reintroduce optional init files for libraries
• Greatly improve the validation library
• Replace session library with one more powerful and flexible

What are the new proposed features to be added for CodeIgniter?

EllisLab are far less open about the new features that will be added to CodeIgniter in the future but Rick Ellis has stated that the database support will be improved.

So what does it mean to developers like you and me?
At present there is no real choice to make as KohanaPHP has not added any new functionality or drifted from CodeIgniter compatibility. But it remains to be seen how it develops and if it becomes a real rival to CodeIgniter.

Any review of PHP editors for Ubuntu without including GEdit is incomplete, the default text editor for the Gnome desktop in Ubuntu at first is very bare but with the installation of the the plug-ins provides a good editor that may lack some features but for sheer raw speed has few equals.

Standard Plugins

• Bracket Completion: Automatically create the closing bracket once one is inserted.
• Character Map: Insert easily all those special characters.
• File Browser Pane: Display the file structure in a handy side pane.
• Indent Lines: Easy indent or unindent lines.
• Modelines: Emacs, Kate and Vim-style modelines support for gedit.
• Smart Spaces: Forget you’re not using tabulations.
• Snippets: Insert common code fragments with a couple of key strokes.
• Tag list: Provides a method to easily insert into a document commonly used tags/strings without having to type them.

Non Standard Plugins

• Class Browser: This is an essential plugin for easy navigating classes listing the functions in the side panel. Uses ctags (exuberant-ctags) which need to be installed via synaptic or sudo apt-get install exuberant-ctags.

So as you can see from the list of plugins above GEdit is not a typical editor there are some features that it lacks such as auto-completion and code folding. Although these are not present it does have some features that are not present in some of the editors reviewed such as snippets these make coding much easier and more productive (Update Jun 2 2007)but unlike Komodo Edit 4.1 these are via key strokes and are very handy. As Jeff Griffiths and Troy Topnik both from Active State have kindly pointed out these are available in Komodo Edit using the triggers.

Over all this is an excellent editor its lightweight nature is very easy to use and if some more plugins were created for code folding and auto-completion would prove more useful.

Other Reviews

• gPHPEdit
• Scribes
• Komodo Edit 4.0

Komodo Edit 4.0 is produced by ActiveState who also produce other commercial software for the linux platform although the pricing is somewhat over the original parameters that I stated for the reviews. This version their free reduced feature multi language editor is not only feature rich but also free. It’s big brother has a lot more feature but at a retail cost of $295.00 (€221) seems quite a lot but it has the advantage of a liberal licensing and can run on mac, windows and linux so you can use it where ever you need to.

So what are the main feature for a PHP developer:

• Autocompletion
• Templates
• Syntax highlighting
• Code Snippets
• Code Folding
• Macros
• Project explorer
• VI emulator
• Emacs keybinding
• Code folding

This is an excellent editor in that it allows you to do a lot without opening your wallet, the first thing that I really like about this editor is the the visualization of the code after all this is what we are writing. Its crisp and smooth and you have many options to customize the highlighting color end background etc.

Autocompletion
The autocompletion is great and is what is missing in a number of the other editors I have tried and can really help keep you productive.

Templates
The templates are very helpful when building project for the web especially when using a framework such as CodeIgniter or CakePHP.

Code Snippets
Although functional and customizable this function is not really what I expected. You can create snippets that are saved for re-use but rather than be able to call them simply using the keyboard. They are stored in one of the toolbox it fells like this added feature is more of an after thought. If you create a large number of snippets you will then have trouble finding them using the mouse which sort of defeats the object of have snippets are you can probably type them just as fast if they are short. This is one feature that needs to be addressed so that all snippets can be accessed using the keyboard easily like other apps such as Textmate

Edit (June 2 2007) This functionality can be created using the triggers see Komodo key binding triggers similar to Textmate although not in the actual build (although it should be) is an essential triggers to maximize the potential of this functionality.

Macros
Unless your using very complex task of over five or six steps macros are not very useful they just repeat what you’ve done.

Navigation
The navigation between files and withing projects is excellent with the possibility to have virtual and normal (live) folder structures. One feature that is lacking is the inability to navigate within files from function to function but this is available in the free editor’s big brother.

Summary
Overall this editor is very good with lots of feature that I haven’t covered so if you’re still looking for an editor try this one out you may like it and decide to purchase the full version but in my opinion some of the features such as code snippets don’t warrant paying the $295.00 (€221) fee. This free version is not only feature rich but gives you that professional developing experience for more advanced feature see the commercial version.

Update (Jun 2 2007)

After Troy and Jeff from Active State pointed me in the right direction there are methods to enable the code snippets to be inserted using the triggers see his post for the Komodo key binding triggers similar to Textmate this great extra functionality really adds to the productive experience.