PHP Development Environment Setup & Tools (Windows Host & Ubuntu Linux VM Guest)

• I mostly use the paid PHPStorm as main development IDE 
  (supports: PHP, JS (Angular, PhoneGap/Cordova), CSS/HTML, .MD, XML etc)
• NetBeans PHP as the free version alternative
• Apache on Ubuntu Debian LTS - VirtualBox
  virtualization (it can change PHP versions by creating/restoring snapshots)
  • PHP7 Current Stable
  • Xdebug PHP debugger
  • Composer dependency manager
  • MySQL 5.7
  • NodeJS asynchronous event driven JavaScript runtime
• IIS on Windows (can easily register and change between PHP versions)
  • Installed with Web Platform Installer 
    
    • PHP 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 and 7.0
    • MySQL
  • Xdebug PHP debugger
  • Composer dependency manager for PHP
  • NodeJS asynchronous event driven JavaScript runtime
• GoogleChrome powerful browser & dev console (has bookmarks sync)
• POSTman for API testing (has sync, unit tests and supports multiple environments)
• SourceTree for Git Source Control Management (and conflict merging as well)
• HeidiSQL as a SQL client tool (db/table backup and restoration, fast)
• WinSCP for SFTP file transfers (light)
• PuTTY SSH and Telnet client (light)
• DiffMerge for file differences comparisons and merging
• WinMerge for directory differences comparisons
• cmder fancy console emulator for Windows
• Slack fancy team messaging app

Configuration

• Since the projects require to work in both Windows and Linux environments I do the following configuration: 
• Windows 
  
  • Map the new server projectname.windows in IIS
  • Locate and open your hosts file C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
  • Add 127.0.0.1 projectname.windows
• Linux 
• Map the /var/www/projectname.local as projectname.local in Apache /etc/apache2/sites-available/projectname.local.conf)
• Locate and open your hosts file from your host Windows C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
• Add 127.0.0.1 (replace with your IP) projectname.local

Resources

• Markdown Editor Online