Don’t try to map the Java/C# development models onto Perl. Perl really doesn’t benefit much from an IDE, and at least in my shop, the IDE is more work than help, so we don’t use one for Perl code. There is an Eclipse mode for Perl, but it doesn’t really do much. Also, Perl is essentially interpreted, so there’s not a compilation step per se. I find Perl mode in a very large multi-pane Emacs window and a virtual machine running a test copy of OTRS to be the most helpful. A working source control system (choose your religion there; we find subversion to be a useful balance between comprehensibility and power) is essential, as there are zillions of moving parts. You could probably use Visual SourceSafe, but it’s really not all that helpful. Wrt to interactive debugging, the Perl debugger is really most of what you have to work with, but it’s not really helpful in that the various pieces of OTRS interact extensively with Apache and the database, and as such most of the debugging output that will tell you anything useful will be in the database or Apache logs, not in the code itself. Not much, but having various logs displayed in that multipane Emacs environment is helpful. From: dev-bounces@otrs.org [mailto:dev-bounces@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Bogdan Iosif Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 5:12 AM To: dev@otrs.org Subject: [dev] How can I setup a dev environment for OTRS? Hi, I'm trying to setup a dev env for OTRS on Windows and I'm new to Perl. After some poking around for a few days trying to understand Perl distributions and development, I'm still pretty much where I started. If a guide for setting up a specific dev env is available, can someone please provide me with its URL? If such a guide is not available, please help with the following direct questions: 1. Is OTRS dev normally done via an IDE, and if so what is the preferred one? I tried to find an ide-project like grouping in the OTRS sources and couldn't spot one. 2. Is it possible to load all the source files in an editor capable of finding method / object definitions? (I don't mean full text search but something like Intellisense) 3. Is interactive debugging possible for OTRS? By this I mean setting breakpoints and exploring values for variables when a breakpoint is hit. 4. Is there such a thing as syntax check, source compilation or unit testing so that I can be as sure as possible that changes I've made do not immediately crash when they are executed? I'm familiar with the dev workflow from Visual Studio (C#) and Eclipse (Java) and hoping to achieve something similar with OTRS, if possible. If someone can answer and is also familiar with those IDEs, please use them for comparison. Thanks, Bogdan What I've already done: - Got the sources from a zip package (http://ftp.otrs.org/pub/otrs/otrs-3.1.9.zip) because a direct CVS link doesn't work from my organization (port 2401 is blocked). - Looked over the dev manual (http://ftp.otrs.org/pub/otrs/doc/doc-admin/3.1/en/pdf/otrs_admin_book.pdf) and Searched the mailing lists (http://lists.otrs.org/pipermail/dev/) with Google. Couldn't find any references to an IDE. - Found info about debugging a running OTRS env by enabling a debug mode where I would get a lot of info logged to files.