How to open project from the network share

Workaround:

Map network share as a disk drive. :)

Working directly over mounted networked location is officially unsupported. We will not accept any bug reports.

Use "New project from existing files" wizard to create a local copy and create auto sync.

Indeed, at the moment'Create project from existing files' wizard does not accept UNC paths (such as \\server\share): http://youtrack.jetbrains.net/issue/WI-2491. Workaround is similar: map your network folder as local drive.

Hey,
What does it mean 'officialy unsupported'? There is demo http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/documentation/index.html

Open code from anywhere, an FTP server, mounted network drive, etc., and start working in no time. Set-up automatic synchronization on files saving.

The keyword is "DIRECTLY". Our wizard creates a local copy. Low-latency storage for all project files is a requirement.

All other scenarios might work - and they usualy do most of the time, especially for local networks, but once network experiences any hiccups - you'll get ALL sorts of the problems. And we won't be able to help you at all.

I can't find this keyword on the page. You should give more detailed descriptions and hire native speaker to dub demos. Otherwise you look like pushers who don't care about customers.

Easy project configuration — open code from anywhere and start working

There's a description that tells you about copying right in on the first wizard page, also clearly visible in video.

We are constantly working on the both quality and features of our product and help materials/demos.

Hi Roman,

PhpStorm relies on instant access to all the project/library files to provide high-quality code analysis, completion, navigation etc. This means that these files should be physically located on local machine. When one needs to work with remote files, following scenario is supported: IDE copies all the files from the server (via FTP, SFTP or network share aka mount) to local machine and allows to easily upload changes back to the server (this is what our demo shows - please see the first page of the project creation wizard). At the moment there's a problem that if you have your server accessible by network share, IDE won't accept UNC path (\\myserver\myproject), so first you have to map this path to some local folder (e.g. using 'subst Z: \\myserver\myproject' command on Windows).

By saying that we don't support direct editing of remote files we mean that if you open your Z:\ folder as local project folder IDE may become slow and unresponsive.

Regards,
Kirill

PS Right now it's not possible to work with single file on server without  copying all the project to local machine, please vote for  http://youtrack.jetbrains.net/issue/WI-1398.

Have changes been made to the file reading process?  Earlier versions of PHPStorm dealt fine with projects on my mapped drive.  Starting with 2016.1 or so, performance became notably worse.

> Have changes been made to the file reading process?

They have. Our indices become more and more complicated, so as local availability of source files becomes more and more important for PhpStorm.
Please consider using Deployment Configurations.

I would have thought that the indices could be locally stored to avoid this being a problem. Also technically network storage can have higher performance than local storage especially with the ageing encrypted drive I have now...

I actually find that the indexing on my local storage can intermittently interfere with switching branches. I have an SVN project and when switching branches on a local hard drive occasionally the branch fails to switch citing locking issues. The switch causes PHP Storm to trigger an indexing event, if the indexing event manages to start before the switch completes there appears to be a 50% chance of the switch failing and requiring cleanup. Closing PHP Storm before a switch is the only way to guarantee a successful switch.

If we compare the throughput of my development machine local vs network

sequential read

108 mb/s VS 100mb/s

sequential write

50 mb/s VS 100 mb/s

random read 4k

2 mb/s VS 100 mb/s

random read 4k

1.4 mb/s VS 100 mb/s

Given that the network performance is substantially higher it is strange that I cannot open files via a network store without them closing straight away.

> I would have thought that the indices could be locally stored to avoid this being a problem.

They are stored locally.

> I have an SVN project and when switching branches on a local hard drive occasionally the branch fails to switch citing locking issues.

I might be getting you wrong but it's not advised to switch branches while there's indexing going on.

> Given that the network performance is substantially higher it is strange that I cannot open files via a network store without them closing straight away.

That's not only the performance question. It's also about the reliability of the connection & the way IDE interacts with file system.

> I might be getting you wrong but it's not advised to switch branches while there's indexing going on.

The switching causes the re-indexing, which in turn causes the switching to fail. i.e. 

1. Switch

2. A few seconds later the re-indexing automatically starts

3. Switch fails

4. Indexing completes.

5. SVN cleanup required

> That's not only the performance question. It's also about the reliability of the connection & the way IDE interacts with file system.

Understand that file watching may be more of an issue, I am unsure why you cannot prevent certain features from operating in this environment rather than prevent even basic editing.

I switched to VS Code. It is perfectly fine with editing sources within Samba paths like \\hassio\config

just add a link...in windows cmd:

mklink /D C:\MyLocalLink "\\NetworkFolder"

I find it amusing that something so fundamental to the 21st centuary as network storage is so compicated for a company as technically compentent as JetBrains. Burying ones head in the sand and saying 'Officialy unsupported' it not really a good excuse for fixing something.

So there may be a performance hit in some synarios, but OS caching and fast networks would probably hide most of that.

It's a simple fact that often these days we have no choice but to use network storage.

Thanks, P Tobias for the workround.  I've got IT to add a link from my OS drive to my user network storage.

A mapped drive letter is clearly too much for PyCharm to understand.

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-40383

Hot tip: VS Code also lets you add directories accessible over SSH.

But then how does it let you search the code? Easy, it sends an agent to the server where it has local access to the files and sends back and forth only the information it needs.

In these days where working from home is becoming increasingly the norm (thanks coronavirus) the ability to access the same codebase from anywhere is more and more useful.

Do consider alternate sources of file data. It's true that UNC paths are trouble but proper network protocols generally give you proper ways to deal with the issues inherent in network filesystems.

This is a throwback to the pathetic default java dialogs that JetBrains seems happy to embrace. I've seen this since the 1990's. It nice to know nothing has changed since MTV stopped showing music videos.

This is a missing feature or a bug. Decide which then fix.

So your suggestion is to copy over an 8GB git repo, just to edit some shell scripts? Might as well use vscode then. That's capable of doing so without copying. Mind you it's open source, so the one who needs it simply implements the feature herself... ;-)

Edit:
It is indeed possible. JB implemented a similar mechanism as VSCode, installing an agent on the remote and then access it via ssh. It only is not rechable from the menu, once you open a project. (At least I did not find it). Close your project and connect to remote development via ssh. It's still marked as Beta as of the time of this writing.