In this new post to his blog Sebastian Bergmann mentions yet another new tool he's released - the PHP Project Wizard, a tool that helps with the creation of configuration files for setting up project build automation.

The PHP Project Wizard (PPW) is a commandline tool that can be used to generate the scripts and configuration files necessary for the build automation of a PHP project. Given the location of a project's directories with sourcecode and tests as well as the project's name, the PHP Project Wizard generates scripts and configuration files necessary for build automation using Apache Ant.

An example of its use is included - a simple call to the shell script with information about the source, tests and project directories. It then generates the XML files for Ant and PHPUunit to run. The result can then be used in the Jenkins jobs for PHP setup seamlessly.

Pavel Shevaev has put together what he calls "yet another Ant alternative" - a tool written in PHP to create project related tasks in a style that matches the Ant and rake methods.

There is a lib-taskman project on the google code hosting where you can find the full documentation, sources and latest releases. It's probably not that elegant as rake but if you want to stick to PHP and have Ant-alike functionality without any XML programming then taskman may turn out to be handy. taskman is very simple to use, it requires only one include, all its code resides in one PHP file, and it has no external dependencies.

He includes a basic use example that sets up the build with "task_hello", "task_comma", "task_world" and "task_say" methods that each do some basic output to show the flow of the process. He also gives examples of possible uses for the tasks like database bootstrapping, auto-code generation, project deployment, etc. He also mentions two other PHP-based projects that do similar things - pake and Phake.

Mike Willbanks as put together a new post talking about continuous integration with Atlassian's Bamboo software and getting it to cooperate with the needed PHP tools to round out your deployment (like PHP Depend, PHP Code Sniffer, PHP Mess Detector and PHPUnit).

Continuous integration is all the rage these days; you are unit testing your code are you not? During some consulting in January with the help of Sebastian Bergmann, from thePHP.cc, we setup continuous integration utilizing Atlassian Bamboo and received training on PHPUnit. Using Atlassian Bamboo for continuous integration will take you a bit to setup, however, I have found it to be an invaluable tool when utilizing the Atlassian stack (JIRA, Confluence, Crucible, Bamboo and Crowd).

He walks you through the process of getting the PHP tools installed (from PEAR packages) and includes links to two Bamboo plugins to help gather some metrics on the deployment process. He talks about the actual build tool (they went with ant), setting up the locations for where output and external dependencies will be stored and includes the ant build.xml file they use to tie it all together.

Alexey Zakhlestins has posted about a build system created by developers of the Symfony framework as PHP's answer to Make and Rake - Pake.

Often, while working on software projects, one finds, that there are repetitive tasks, which would be much easier to deal with, if automated. In the C/Unix world, this task is often solved by Make, Java programmers prefer Apache Ant, Ruby programmers use Rake. The fact, which is not commonly known, is, that PHP also has such instrument, and it is called Pake. It was originally created by authors of Symfony framework. Unfortunately, they never wrote any documentation, which killed adoption rates.

He shows what a sample "Pakefile.php" file might look like and links to the github page for his revamp of the project to add a few more helpers. You can also install it as a PEAR pacakge.

In an effort to improve the way that he's writing web applications, Felix Geisendörfer has looked around him and found some good tools to "help him on his way to agility" in his programming. In this new post, he recounts some of his findings so far.

So I've decided that, over the course of the next couple days (or weeks), I'll dedicate quite a bit of my time to explore ways to improve the way I write web applications. This includes getting into unit/integration testing, automating workflows, and also adopting better coding techniques.

He covers four software packages that he's found so far to help achieve this goal:

• Apache Ant
• SimpleTest for PHP
• Selenium Remote Control
• Selenium IDE

For each of the software in the list, he talks about what kinds of features they offer and how that relates back to his goal. There are also links to downloads and documentation for each of them for further reading.

When hard a work coding, browser windows with manual entries have a nasty habit of multiplying (at least when I work). So, neededless to say, I was happy to find GotAPI.com, a site that compiles the reference materials for several different web development languages into one handy browser window.

The page, by default, searches HTML resources, including the W3C specs and Microsoft's MSDN materials. Those and the w3schools website show up often in the other languages available - CSS, XSL, XML, and XPath. The PHP manual that's referenced is just pulled from the PHP.net site, but it's still nice to have it all right there.

When searching, a "suggeted terms" box pops up to help you narrow down the search faster. It searches not only the beginnings of the words for your term, but it looks inside them as well, matching anywhere.

It would be nice if the site had some kind of bookmarking system built into it - then you could keep a reference and just flip back and forth between the pages with a single click of the mouse.

DevArticles has conntinued their "Deploying your Site with PHPEclipse" series with this new tutorial - part two in the series, a continuation of the excerpt of the "PHPEclipse: A User Guide" from Packt.

Part two picks up right where the previous entry left off - working with the settings for Ant to configure the site's deployment. They show you how to create the classpath and a build file for your site before showing you how to run it and do some testing.

They also look at one of the other tools that Ant has to offer to make managing your site that much simpler - the Outline view in Eclipse. It lays out the publishing "schedule" in one easy place.

With an excerpt from the Packt Publishing book "PHPEclipse: A User Guide" (Shu-Wai Chow), DevArticles has posted this first of a two part series looking at the use of phpEclipse to help with the deployment of your site.

Eclipse simplifies the process of deploying your site to a web server. You can even use Ant, traditionally thought of as a Java tool, to help you in the deployment.

Once again, Eclipse simplifies our work by including several tools that aid us in this process.

The key to deployment in Eclipse is the export function. Eclipse gives us many options in exporting our site. First, we will look at FTP, an old and common method of moving files.

They cover how to set up an FTP site inside the editor, making it a simple process to upload any chnages you've made instantly. They also discuss other methods like SFTP, WebDAV, and Ant support the client can adapt itself to. There are screenshots along the way to help you through each step, including some from other operating systems where the setup might be a bit different.

In this blog entry on Sebastian Nohn's site, he explains how to use CruiseControl, Ant, and PHPUnit to provide continuous builds for your application.

An important part of any software development process is getting reliable builds of the software. Despite it's importance, we are often surprised when this isn't done. We stress a fully automated and reproducible build, including testing, that runs many times a day. This allows each developer to integrate daily thus reducing integration problems.

This blog posting will show you how to enable continuous builds with CruiseControl, Ant and PHPUnit. But be warned: Continuous builds are addicting.

They step you through the process - the installation of the needed packages, working with Ant, getting it to talk to Cruise, and the integration of PHPUnit. Finally, they work in a method to notify others (in this case, the management) when successful builds have been compiled.

From the O'Reilly Network's ONLamp.com site today, there's this new article talking about improving your "build process" with the help of Ant, a Java-based build tool.

Ant is a tool written in Java. Many PHP advocates like to defend PHP against other technologies in the web space by claiming, "Use the best tool for the job!" PHP on the Web is a shining example of this. However, I've yet to find any tools written in PHP that can do everything Ant can do. The closest I've found is a project called Phing, but even this tool lacks some advanced aspects of Ant. (Maybe they'll catch up!)

The article isn't an Ant tutorial so much as an overview of what Ant looks like and works like. It includes several examples, including showing off features like archiving abilities and change management...