There are several ways to install PHPUnit. This chapter showed all the available options. The Composer and PEAR installation methods are recommended as they can handle all the required dependencies and allow to keep PHPUnit and the required libraries up to date. PHPUnit installation is not difficult if the right path is followed. Xdebug extension is optional, but it is strongly recommended that you install it as we will need extra features such as remote debugging and code coverage later.
When writing and running PHPUnit tests, it's really important to have a good IDE (Integrated Development Environment). All modern IDEs have good PHPUnit support. The next chapter will show the four most popular IDEs in PHP world. We will also see how to configure them, how to execute tests, and how to debug tests. Good support for PHPUnit and PHP in general is something that makes a developer's life much easier, and he/she is able to produce good code much faster than using an ordinary text editor.
To have PHPUnit installed is the first good step. In the next chapter, before jumping to writing tests, it's good to have a look at how to run and debug PHPUnit tests in IDE such as Zend Studio and NetBeans.