What's the use of "Build Project" in eclipse, in a php project? [closed]

Question

I have been using eclipse for years now creating php projects, and I have a not touched any java code or c++ code with it so far.

My assumptions are that when eclipse does a "Build Project", it is doing something useless to interpreted languages such as php, and a "Project Refresh" would scan files to detect classes, methods, namespaces.

But all that are just assumptions... Could someone shed some light please?

Answer 1

In an Eclipse project, builders are used both to produce artifacts of compilation and to perform validation. I am referring to problems view entries, not to be confused with validation you see an editor when you have a particular file open. For a scripting language like PHP, there are no artifacts to produce, but there is a need to validate source files.

The set of builders is controlled by project type. Eclipse then tracks what has changed and calls those builders. This typically happens transparently (auto build). There are also a few menu items like "Build Project" that explicitly trigger different levels of re-build activity.

For a PHP project, calling "Build Project" will force re-validation of PHP source files.