Brian Swan has a new post today looking at how to use the Eclipse tools for Windows Azure with your PHP applications. The tools allow you to more directly interface with your Azure instance without having to do much outside of Eclipse.

Following on the heels of announcements a couple of weeks ago, the Interoperability Team at Microsoft is announcing the availability of another update to the Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse. In this post, I'll use the updated Eclipse plug-i to walk you through creating and running a project in the Windows Azure Development Fabric, readying a project for deployment to Windows Azure, and deploying a project to Windows Azure.

He walks you through the basics of getting the extension for Eclipse installed and how to create a fresh development project to hook into your Azure instance. Then you select the PHP runtime you want to use, set some debugging and create the project. Then running the PHP instance is as easy as selecting the "Run Windows Azure PHP Project..." from the "Windows Azure" menu. He also includes some instructions about running a custom PHP version and project deployment - all with screenshots to help along the way.