Native PHP support in Visual Studio 2010?

Question

Is there any truth to the rumor that Visual Studio 2010 will natively support PHP coding?

(http://www.codeplex.com/php4vs)

If not,what are the options?(except VS.php)

Answer 1

Visual Studio 2010 won't have native PHP support. However, it's "relatively easy" to add some language support to Visual Studio 2010. If all you want is syntax highlighting, auto comment/uncomment, and brace matching, it could be done in one sitting by someone who knows how the new extensibility model works.

After you wrote this post, I started making an add-in to show you what I mean. I downloaded the WordPress source only to note that the .php extension is registered with Expression Web 3, which does support PHP (first image).

My 15 minute attempt at an extension (second image) is not as impressive, but keep in mind I started working on it after I answered this question. Edit: Updated to color keywords/global functions/global objects separately.

_{(source: 280z28.org)}

_{(source: 280z28.org)}

Answer 2

Check out CodeLobster php, it's free and has a very similar look and feel to visual studio plus it has IntelliSense and debugging support.