PhpStorm vs SourceTree

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PhpStorm

13.9K
10.8K
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1.6K
SourceTree

10.4K
7.9K
+ 1
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PhpStorm vs SourceTree: What are the differences?

### Key Differences between PhpStorm and SourceTree

**1. User Interface**: PhpStorm is an integrated development environment (IDE) specifically designed for PHP development, offering advanced code editing and debugging features, while SourceTree is a graphical Git client for managing Git repositories with a focus on visualizing branching and merging. 

**2. Functionality**: PhpStorm provides a wide range of features for PHP development such as syntax highlighting, code completion, and integration with popular frameworks, whereas SourceTree is primarily focused on Git operations like committing, branching, and merging. 

**3. Platform Compatibility**: PhpStorm is a desktop IDE available for Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems, providing a consistent experience across different platforms, whereas SourceTree is a desktop application that is available for Windows and macOS but not Linux. 

**4. Pricing Model**: PhpStorm is a paid software with different licensing options including monthly subscriptions and perpetual licenses, offering regular updates and support, while SourceTree is free to download and use, making it a cost-effective option for managing Git repositories. 

**5. Integration**: PhpStorm seamlessly integrates with version control systems like Git, SVN, and Mercurial, providing a comprehensive development environment, while SourceTree focuses exclusively on Git and does not support other version control systems. 

**6. Learning Curve**: PhpStorm requires some learning and familiarity with its features to fully utilize its capabilities, especially for beginners, while SourceTree offers an intuitive interface that simplifies common Git tasks, making it easier for users to get started with version control. 

In Summary, the key differences between PhpStorm and SourceTree lie in their user interface, functionality, platform compatibility, pricing model, integration options, and learning curve.

Advice on PhpStorm and SourceTree
Johnny Bell

When I switched to Visual Studio Code 12 months ago from PhpStorm I was in love, it was great. However after using VS Code for a year, I see myself switching back and forth between WebStorm and VS Code. The VS Code plugins are great however I notice Prettier, auto importing of components and linking to the definitions often break, and I have to restart VS Code multiple times a week and sometimes a day.

We use Ruby here so I do like that Visual Studio Code highlights that for me out of the box, with WebStorm I'd need to probably also install RubyMine and have 2 IDE's going at the same time.

Should I stick with Visual Studio Code, or switch to something else? #help

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Replies (15)
Erik Ostrom
Recommends
on
RubyMineRubyMine

If you're working with both Ruby and JavaScript, buy RubyMine and shut down the other two. It's much better for Ruby than Visual Studio Code is. It can also do everything WebStorm does, if you install the plugins you need from JetBrains, and they all work together nicely.

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Marc Swikull
Recommends
on
RubyMineRubyMine

If you install RubyMine, you shouldn't need WebStorm, as all the functionality of WebStorm appears to be included in RubyMine. (See here: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/132950).

I've used PhpStorm for several years and have never needed to open (or even download) WebStorm for anything front-end or JavaScript related.

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Russel Werner
Lead Engineer at StackShare · | 6 upvotes · 261.7K views
Recommends
on
WebStormWebStorm
at

I work at the same company as you and I use WebStorm for 99% of my tasks. I also have RubyMine installed and use that when I have to tweak some backend code. I tried using RubyMine for JavaScript but was unhappy with how it felt and I believe that WebStorm is faster because it has less plugins and language extensions running. Summary: Buy and use WebStorm for primary development and keep VS Code around for when you have to touch Ruby.

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

I've never had much issue running multiple IDEs and generally pick them based on the languages they best support. For front end work where I mainly use TypeScript, I stick heavily with Visual Studio Code. However, for backend work which we do primarily in Python, PyCharm is my go-to editor. The one thing that I do however is I do remap keyboard shortcuts so I get consistent keyboard ability even when I switch IDEs.

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Danny Battison
Recommends
on
PhpStormPhpStorm

JetBrains all the way - my entire team uses PhpStorm and none of us would even consider switching.

The availability of IDEs for other languages along with consistency in environment and keyboard shortcuts is also a godsend, which is the reason I'd also choose Rider over Visual Studio (but also VS for Mac is trash, but I digress...)

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a text editor. And this is best option in my opinion. For Ruby, I cannot say how VS Code is good. If you wanna choose IDE, RubyMine should fit your needs. Because IDEs are more compatible with major needs. But text editors are just text editor. You can do same things with also text editors. I recommend to try both VS Code and RubyMine. And you will be able to find which fits better for your needs

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Recommends
on
PhpStormPhpStorm

So here is the deal man, bottom line you want to write code. All of these tools are built in a mouse-driven world, they are designed not for engineers, but office monkeys. If you want a real workflow that gives you ultimate performance, customization and speed you need to use a modal editor, I suggest NeoVim. Start using it 20% of the time on single file edits, watch youtube videos about it and teach yourself vim gestures. It will infuriate you for 6 weeks, make you cry for another 2 months. But as you use it more, as long as your usage goes over 40% of the time, in 6 months you will understand why most of the world's too engineers use it. Settling on lesser editors out of laziness is exactly the attitude that results in shitty the engineering. Yeah it's hard. You're smart. You do hard things. Once it isn't hard anymore you will blow yourself away at how much more efficiently you edit files.

Also vim keybindings in a mouse driven editor does not cut it. Managing files, buffers and workflow is half of the value of vim/neovim. It is OK if you have to use an IDE (currently I only use an IDE for java development, so I have little choice)

So use VSCode while you teach yourself vim.

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

If I have to choose one I would go with VS Code; it’s become pretty mature and keeps getting better. If those plugins are creating problems for you then just uninstall them, find an alternative, or make a PR to fix. But at the end of the day these are IDE’s and they are meant to save you time. I would go with whatever helps you develop code faster. If restarting VS code slows you down then make a switch, that personally would annoying the crap out of me. Else maybe it’s a quick restart, not the end of the word, hopefully someone will fix at some point.

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

If you find something that works and are comfortable with it, stay with it. Changing IDE's and learning their idiosyncrasies takes valuable time away from programming while learning setups and keyboard short cuts. I personally use VS Code for cost and decent multiple language support. I've had issues occasionally with it locking up, but it is under heavy development and continually improving. I have also found it more intuitive for new programmers. ** Having profiles for different languages can reduce the amount of plugins running and issues they can cause.

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Recommends
on
PhpStormPhpStorm

I usually have both running but do the bulk of my language work in the appropriate JetBrains flavor. One thing to watch out for in VS is that under the hood it is running the tools needed for whatever language you are working with. This is where tools like JetBrains shine. While I am sure you can tune the heck out of what you use in VS, the provides context and clarity...

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Kyle Schoonover
Senior Software Engineer at Nordstrom · | 2 upvotes · 224.3K views
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

I'm personally a Visual Studio Code fan. I've used it for both Go and Java. It really depends on the quality and support of the plugins. Typically VS Code doesn't crash as much as a bad plugin causes an unforeseen error. Make sure you stay up to date and look at alternative plugins.

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Lungu Alexandru-Mihai
Recommends
on
VimVim

Well you can try for a while MacVim because it is already configured with tons of plugins. My favourite text editors are Sublime Text and TextMate which are lightweight and speedy. My feeling is that JetBrains IDEs are making you brainless.

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Recommends
at

Visiual Studio is the best

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Are you using the prettier-vscode VSCode extension or prettier via prettier-eslint? The prettier-vscode extension recommends you...

Use prettier-eslint instead of prettier. Other settings will only be fallbacks in case they could not be inferred from ESLint rules.

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Recommends

An integrated development environment software with huge potential in the future is VS Code. So I would personally say you can use VS code.

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Decisions about PhpStorm and SourceTree

I explored many Git Desktop tools for the Mac and my final decision was to use Fork. What I love about for that it contains three features, I like about a Git Client tool.

It allows * to handle day to day git operations (least important for me as I am cli junkie) * it helps to investigate the history * most important of all, it has a repo manager which many other tools are missing.

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Pros of PhpStorm
Pros of SourceTree
  • 287
    Best ide for php
  • 232
    Easy to use
  • 218
    Functionality
  • 166
    Plugins
  • 160
    Code analysis
  • 87
    Integrated version control
  • 76
    Great php ide for mac
  • 73
    All-round php ide
  • 62
    Local history
  • 53
    Themes
  • 18
    Best PHP IDE
  • 11
    Database control
  • 10
    Easy to find anything and everything in your code
  • 9
    Best bebugging
  • 9
    Best inspection variable
  • 7
    Command line integration
  • 7
    Great frameworks integration
  • 7
    PHPUnit integration
  • 7
    Getting Better
  • 7
    UX
  • 6
    Composer integration
  • 6
    Performance
  • 6
    Coolest IDE
  • 5
    Real time code validation
  • 5
    Easy to use and github interaction
  • 5
    Neat does the job and easy
  • 5
    Best ide for advanced php and symfony
  • 4
    Best ide for php
  • 4
    TypeScript support
  • 4
    Code indexing
  • 4
    It has no match. it filled one of the biggest void
  • 4
    Fast and relevant auto-complete
  • 4
    Great refactoring support
  • 4
    Cross platform
  • 3
    Integration with Vagrant and Docker
  • 3
    Debugger for Javascript
  • 3
    Good
  • 3
    Very good
  • 2
    Debugging in the Just-In-Time Mode
  • 2
    Perfect locahost / host sync
  • 2
    Awesome debugging features
  • 205
    Visual history and branch view
  • 164
    Beautiful UI
  • 134
    Easy repository browsing
  • 87
    Gitflow support
  • 75
    Interactive stage or discard by hunks or lines
  • 22
    Great branch visualization
  • 18
    Ui/ux and user-friendliness
  • 8
    Best Git Client UI/Features
  • 7
    Search commit messages
  • 5
    Available for Windows and macOS
  • 1
    Log only one file
  • 1
    Search file content

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Cons of PhpStorm
Cons of SourceTree
  • 14
    Uses a lot of memory
  • 10
    Does not open large files
  • 9
    Slow
  • 8
    Uses Java machine
  • 3
    No way to change syntax highlight for files without ext
  • 2
    No save prompt or asterisk on file change
  • 12
    Crashes often
  • 8
    So many bugs
  • 7
    Fetching is slow sometimes
  • 5
    No dark theme (Windows)
  • 5
    Extremely slow
  • 5
    Very unstable
  • 4
    Can't select text in diff (windows)
  • 3
    Freezes quite frequently
  • 3
    Can't scale window from top corners
  • 2
    UI blinking
  • 2
    Windows version worse than mac version
  • 2
    Installs to AppData folder (windows)
  • 2
    Diff makes tab indentation look like spaces
  • 2
    Windows and Mac versions are very different
  • 2
    Diff appears as if space indented even if its tabs
  • 2
    Doesn't have an option for git init
  • 2
    Useless for merge conflict resolution
  • 2
    Doesn't differentiate submodules from parent repos
  • 2
    Requires bitbucket account
  • 1
    Generally hard to like
  • 1
    No reflog support
  • 1
    Bases binary check on filesize
  • 1
    Can't add remotes by right clicking remotes (windows)

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What is PhpStorm?

PhpStorm is a PHP IDE which keeps up with latest PHP & web languages trends, integrates a variety of modern tools, and brings even more extensibility with support for major PHP frameworks.

What is SourceTree?

Use the full capability of Git and Mercurial in the SourceTree desktop app. Manage all your repositories, hosted or local, through SourceTree's simple interface.

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What companies use PhpStorm?
What companies use SourceTree?
See which teams inside your own company are using PhpStorm or SourceTree.
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What tools integrate with PhpStorm?
What tools integrate with SourceTree?

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What are some alternatives to PhpStorm and SourceTree?
Visual Studio Code
Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
WebStorm
WebStorm is a lightweight and intelligent IDE for front-end development and server-side JavaScript.
Sublime Text
Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.
DataGrip
A cross-platform IDE that is aimed at DBAs and developers working with SQL databases.
NetBeans IDE
NetBeans IDE is FREE, open source, and has a worldwide community of users and developers.
See all alternatives