Setting up PDT 1.x, Eclipse 3.3 on Ubuntu Hardy

Not quite convinced by PHP under Netbeans, I decided to go back to the PDT plugin for Eclipse for my PHP development. Unfortunately setting this all up is much more complicated than it should be, since the current release version of PDT requires Eclipse 3.3+, but the latest version in the Ubuntu repositories is 3.2.2.

There are alternative ways to install this of course, the PDT site offers an all-in-one package, or you can download Eclipse 3.3 from eclipse.org, and go from there. However I've never had too much luck with these.

So here's how to get it working:

1. Install the latest version of Eclipse from the repositories (you can do this either via. Applications > Add/Remove, via. Synaptic or via. the command line).
2. Update Eclipse to 3.3.x using its own build-in auto-update function. To do this:
   
   1. Open a terminal window and run Eclipse as root - sudo eclipse (this is important as otherwise your update will fail when it tries to overwrite some of the root-owned core files)
   2. Add some new update sites which contain the 3.3 features (I used the list in this blog post), you can either add them manually or import from the from the supplied XML file.
   3. Select the most recent Eclipse 3.3.x version and then follow all of the installation instructions (will take a few mins).
   4. Exit Eclipse
3. Install PDT. Run Eclipse normally (not via. sudo), you should get the 'Europa' splash screen, which will confirm that you're running version 3.3.x. Help > Find and install updates etc. Select PDT and its dependencies, and install.

et. voila.

Hopefully the next Ubuntu release will include an Eclipse update, which will make this process a lot easier.