debugging PECL extension with eclipse or other IDE

I am really hoping to make some progress tomorrow on AMFEXT (which, sadly I have neglected for months). I realize that I've been avoiding it because of the painful chore that is my development process. It basically involves editing source code with nano, performing make, make install, and then using gdb from the command line to debug the code. So slow! Can anyone recommend a general outline of how I might get this running in Eclipse or some other wonderful IDE? I've got Eclipse set up to debug my PHP scripts either as CLI or via apache, but don't have any experience with C programming when one must use make and make install. Also, is there a way to test one's PHP build without the install bit? Sorry if these questions seem really basic. I have already made some progress improving the AMF3 serialization code, I just want to move faster!