Setting up Aptana Studio

Aptana Studio comes packaged in two different ways:

• An standalone executable
• An Eclipse plug-in

I tried the Eclipse plug-in because I plan to use Eclipse for C/C++ development. But I didn't like the way it worked as much as using Aptana Studio standalone. I also plan to run OpenSUSE in the background and access it using X-Windows from the Mac.

I used the following procedure to install Aptana Studio:

• Download the .zip from the Aptana website: Aptana's website
• Unzip it.
• Start the executable: ApatanaStudio

It ran just fine, then it aborted. Hmm... Seems like a memory issue. I created the VM with 512MB of RAM, seemed like enough, maybe not - Java programs take a lot of memory. So I shutdown OpenSUSE, changed the memory configuration to 1536MB and rebooted. This fixed the problem.

Next I installed SVN and PHP. Aptana cannot install SVN, so it must be installed in OpenSUSE first. Using Software Management, install the following packages:

• subversion
• subversion-server
• subversion-tools

It's tempting to the the "My Studio" page to install packages, but it is simpler to use Help/Install Aptana Features instead.

I plan to use jQuery and PHP, simply select the following items from the list and install them:

• Web Application Platforms
  • PHP Development Tools (PDT)
• JavaScript Libraries
  • jQuery Support - I just installed version 1.4

To install Subclipse you must use Help/Install New Software. Select "All Available Sites". Scroll down and select "Subclipse" from the menu.