Coda

Espresso

Mac Dev Tools Worth Having

For a lot of people, the Mac is seen as the PC for a “creative person”. Very “artsy.” Now, I’ve spent years (decades) developing code on Sun workstations, DEC equipment, and PC’s – the Mac, and the tools that are available on it beat all that stuff by a wide margin.

For starters, Mac OS X is itself a Linux environment. So no more shoe-horning a WAMP environment onto a PC. It’s not needed (although I do use MAMP for the Mac because Apple chose not to install some of the standard PHP extensions as standard, but for most developers this may not be needed).

But what IDE does one run? Sure, you can install the ever-present Eclipse platform. Which is capable of pretty much anything and everything if you locate/install/configure/incant the right stuff. For me, Eclipse was just too much work to get running, too slow, and too idiosynchratic to use on a daily basis.

Thus enters Coda, by Panic. Coda combines a solid code editor, a rock-solid FTP client, a terminal, a CSS editor, Subversion, and site management in one package. If you code in Rails or work with CMS-based sites, the inclusion of a SSH terminal which remembers passwords is a life saver. No more neededing to reach for Terminal or iTerm when you need to launch mongrel or change some folder protection – just open a tab, hit the button and you’re in.

Subversion support is a recent addition to Coda and it works well. I still find it more reliable to do high volume operations from the command line, but for ongoing code changes the way Coda shows you what’s changed and what needs to be added to your repository is pretty damn good.

Coda also supports multi-file search and Regex search. Both of which can also do replace. You don’t appreciate the value of these features until you need them. There is also support for snippets and the latest major release also supports plug-ins. So the text-manipulation capabilities of Coda are now able to grow beyond what the Panic developers have time to do. Coda supports FTP and SFTP and allows for live-editing of a site’s files right on the server. This is also something one doesn’t appreciate until one needs it.

For $99, Coda is a solid investment. I’ve built everything from small client sites to medium sized WordPress and Joomla CMS sites to very large PHP-mySQL and Rails sites with it, and Coda has come through every time. I have never hit a case where I had to say “it won’t let me do that” on something I was working on. Which is what an IDE should be able to claim.

But …

There are a lot of times where I need to do a small site for a client and I don’t need a big IDE. I need something small that can deploy the small site to possibly several domain installations (for proofing or mirroring). I still want to be able to edit and browse the files on the server, but I don’t need the project management. And it has to be fast.

The latest MacHeist served up Espresso, by MacRabbit (makers of the excellent CSSEdit). Espresso uses project files instead of a built-in project manager … which is actually what I wanted since the number of projects I have floating around kind of overwhelms Coda’s interface. Rather than use conventional tabs, Espresso uses a list of open files and previews. This takes a little getting used to, but it actually works better than tabs once you gave more than a dozen files open.

As expected, the CSS editor is great in Espresso. The code editor is also very good, with inteligent tag completion and all that good stuff. The system is extensible by “sugars” so as this gets into more developers hands I expect the language support to continue to improve, much as it did with TextMate.

Snippets are supported, but no Subversion. Which is OK for what I intend to use this for. I don’t mind firing up a SVN client every few days as the need to check in isn’t as high on smaller projects. The FTP support is one thing I really love about Espresso. You can define multiple FTP sites, so you can deploy to your staging server, the client’s server, and potentially other servers as well (mirrors, portfolios, etc. etc.).  You can also browse and edit in place for each FTP desitination, which is great for quick touch-ups.

I did have a few FTP connection problems with Espresso when I was working from a hotel, Coda worked like a charm. But that was Espresso 1.0.1 … MacRabbit made stability improvements since that release, so I expect those problems are gone now as well.

At around $80, Espresso is a little on the pricey side compared to Coda. Coda simply does more and lists for only $20 more. Had I not gotten Espresso as part of the MacHeist bundle, I might not have bothered with it. Which isn’t a knock on Espresso as a product, just that for the list price it’s hard to justify not getting Coda instead. If Espresso was closer to $40, it’d be a no-brainer to get it in addition to Coda.

Or you’re working on a site and your CSS used to work and now it’s broken and you need to roll back. But did you save a complete copy of the site from that time someplace on your drive?

Version control used to be something only software developers used. But with the complexity of web site design, temnplate design, and Flash design, it can be a real boon to anyone who developers for the Web. Fortunately, version control now integrates right into the Windows XP desktop thanks to free programs like Tortoise SVN.

Tortoise SVN is a fully integrated client for the ((Subversion)) version control system. Subversion is what many of the current crop of software development IDE’s use to manage their code. It’s a very robust system which allows for multiple projects, checking files in and out, backtracking to old versions, and reconstituting entire development areas on other disks, or even other PC’s.

The system is pretty easy to use. Easy enough that there’s no excuse not to. For local use, simply designate a folder on a drive to be the Subversion repository and create a folder hierarchy in whatever manner works for the work at hand. One folder per web site or one per client or one per project. Whatever fits. Which is nice because it means the user does not need to change the way they work with their files in order to use version control.

It is also a good idea to set the repository directory to be on a drive other than the main working drive. Doing so basically provides a back-up of the primary drive as well as version control. Another option is to use a service like cvs-dude.com. This is a nice, well run service which provides Subversion space and other services on their servers. The price is reasonable and if off-site data storage is a concern, then this is a way to kill two birds with one stone.

Note that Subversion repositories can be (and on Windows XP, should be) saved in native file format. Which allows the Subversion repository to be synchronized between PC’s (I do so between my desktop PC and my laptop) or archived onto removable media for back-up.

Once Tortoise is installed on user’s PC a new menU (shown here) becomes available to manage the version control. For the most part, the “Check Out,” “Add,” and “Commit” commands will be what gets used most. Desktop icons will have overlays which show the check-in state of each file, so it is easy to see if changes have been commited to Subversion. And, of course, each check-in allows for comments – so if a big Photoshop file is being checked in as “final art” the comment can indicate this, and then be searched for later within the repository if it is needed to be recalled.

The real trick to version control is actually using it. The good thing is that the TortoisSVN menu is so inobtrussive that its very easy to do so. Much easier than creating back-ups which require handing removable media and lengthy wait times while large amounts of data are spooled. By contrast, a Subversion check-in of even large files take only a few seconds. And while not as bullet-proof as backing up to a CD-RW, it is still a back-up.

More than a back-up. The Subversion repository holds a complete history of every file checked in, in whatever level of detail the owner sets for it. So when a client says they want a feature back that a month ago they said they wanted removed, that code is still in the repository. Or if you accidentally delete a layer from a Photoshop file that held the styles needed for a mennu bar; that too is still in the repository.

Version control can be the best friend of a web developer. And best of all: it’s all free.