WorkingSoftware.com.au: Configuring PHP4 and PHP5 to run concurrently on FreeBSD
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From Iain Dooley on WorkingSoftware.com.au today, there's a new tutorial covering the installation of PHP4 and PHP5 onto a FreeBSD server.   So, briefly here is my little recipe for getting PHP4 and PHP5 to run concurrently on FreeBSD using Apache 2.2 and mod_proxy.   He points out one method that's been posted to get this all working, but notes that there are a few issues he found with it. That's the point of this post - to rectify and solve those problems to have you on your way to a happily working PHP4/PHP5 installation.   His guide is broken up into the key steps:   Compiling with mod_proxy from FreeBSD ports Installing another Apache instance  PHP Installation  Configuring and running Apache and a bug, Bug 37770, he came across where the proxy would just stop working
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The Yahoo-acquired site Upcoming.org has released a new (PHP 5 only) wrapper class for interfacing with their backend API. The Zend Developer Zone has the full story.   On Sept 28, 2006, Upcoming.org released it's new PHP 5 (only) wrapper class. Details can be found here and the wiki page can be found here.   The wiki page lists the prerequsites you'll need to use the wrapper (including SimpleMXL, PEAR's Cache::Lite, and the API documentation) as well as a simple "getting started" guide to making requests. There are a few issues they mention happening with the package, so keep an eye out for future updates.
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As Greg Beaver mentions in his latest blog entry, the main website for PEAR, pear.php.net has been mirrored as part of an effort to restructure and "revamp" the PEAR wesbite.   I'm excited to announce the first two mirrors of pear.php.net are now actively mirroring the installer REST files and actual .tgz files of package releases.  They are http://us.pear.php.net (provided by Joshua Eichorn and bluga.net) and http://de.pear.php.net (provided by Christian Weiske).  The option exists at a future date of mirroring the entire website, but this will not be possible without further changes to the infrastructure.   Using these servers is only slightly different than the main site, setting the preferred_mirror setting in your configuration to use one of the above.
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Ilia Alshanetsky has noted that the latest release canidate for the PHP 5.2.x series, PHP 5.2.5RC1, is now available for download.   This RC includes a fair number of fixes since our last release and predominantly works on improving the stability of the 5.2 tree as well as including a small number of minor security fixes. I'd like to ask everyone to test this release against your code and setups, we are aiming for a quick release cycle and user feedback is critical for a successful release.   You can download this new edition directly from here (no Windows builds yet).
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Alexey Zakhlestin gave a talk for the PHPThinktank IRC channel recently on the topic of YAML, PHP, and some of the work that he's done combining the two.   It happened a bit of spontaneously, so noone was invited. It was my first try, to make introduction to yaml for php prgrammers, and if there is more interest I will give another talk which will cover more details, this time with proper scheduling :)   You can check out the log of the discussion for his entire talk (covering topics like what YAML is, where to get more information on it, some of its features, and a mention of the Syck library for parsing it).
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:FCHouse.com: Debugging PHP5 with Eclipse PDT under OSX: a piece of cake!Tutorial: An Introduction to PHPIDS (PHP-Intrusion Detection System)Developer.com: Build Multi-lingual Websites With the Zend FrameworkPro::PHP Podcast: Newscast for June 14th, 2007Community News: VS.PHP v2.3 for Visual Studio ReleasedJob Posting: S&ME, Inc. Seeks Web Developer (Charlotte, NC)Site News: Popular Posts for the Week of 06.15.2007Nexen.net: Ext/elephpant : the furry PHP mascotJob Posting: Coolpink Seeks a PHP Developer (Leeds, Yorkshire, UK)Job Posting: BravoTECH Seeks a PHP Developer (Dallas, TX)
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PHP isn't exclusively for Web pages. You can use it like Perl for cron jobs and other tasks.
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In this post to the Developer Tutorials blog, Akash Mehta talks about the "version dilemma" that developers face when looking for good hosting - with all of the push towards PHP5 these days, why is it that so many hosting environments are still running on PHP4?   If you purchase a cheap hosting account with many of the major web hosts around today, chances are they will be running PHP 4. The problem for web hosts is this: the PHP community may have moved on from version 4, but a lot of the code out there hasn't.   He recommends one solution that several hosting providers are starting to gravitate towards - offering both to their customers and allowing them to switch between them (via something like cPanel).
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On Alexander Netkachev's blog today, there's a walk-through of a light and easy method for getting PHP and Apache up and running. It makes use of the Installer Technical Preview utility to make live simpler.    I created the installer, which primary goal is to provide the developer with command-line tools for basic Apache/PHP/MySQL management tasks.    This a preview version of AMP installer and configurator. Although, it is very far from being a real time-proven and tested installation method, with your help and effort we can make it better.    There's a link for the download and a brief How-To on using the package to get things up and running quickly. There's also two things on the To-Do list for upcoming versions - installers for various other databases and support for automatic installation of modern PHP applications (like WordPress, phpbb, etc).
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From Dotvoid.com, there's a new posting talking about the continued use of PHP4 by developers and hosting companies and how it's effecting the community as a whole.    It is true that the PHP 5 uptake has been slow. Many internet service providers as well as many developers are reluctant to switch. This is probably, as others have stated, a circular dependency.   As ISP:s are reluctant to upgrade the popular open source projects are hesitant to upgrade. I still think the wrong people are worried. Still PHP 5 is increasing it's share and finally the day will come when version 4 will be considered legacy. Hopefully before PHP 6 is here but not necessarily.    He continues on, talking about what PHP5 is really about (it's not just the objects!) and things that can help make it an easier sell to those still lagging in a PHP4 world - like the Zend Framework.
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A few more of the International PHP Conference slides have surfaced for your enjoyment:  Sandro Zic - A comparison of PEAR Installer, Phing, and ZZ/OSS Installer alan@akbkhome.com - PEAR and PHP 5 (blog entry)
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Pierre-Alain Joye has a little reminder posted to his blog today about two posts from planet-debian and Apache that refer to clones/references in PHP4 and PHP5 and some of the misconceptions presented there.   Reading planet-debian and Apache (from Sven and David), I catched two posts about clones and references in php4 and php5. I do not think it is worth to explain again everything here as Sara wrote a very good post already, check it out here.   He mentions his annoyance with articles/posts like these and the impact that it has on PHP as well as the person posting.   I wonder when the OS community in general will be mature enough to stop bitching at each other. And that's valid for PHP developers, gnome-kde and other well established wars.
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Secunia has released an advisory for PHP today related to an issue caused by an integer overflow that could allow for bypassing of security of an application.   A weakness and a vulnerability have been reported in PHP 5, where the vulnerability has unknown impact and the weakness can be exploited by malicious, local users to bypass certain security restrictions.   The issue is caused by issues with the chunk_split and realpath functions that can lead to a bypass of the open_basedir restriction on a server.   The issue is marked as "moderately critical" and it is suggested that users update to PHP 5.2.3 to correct the issue.
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Greg Beaver, PEAR guru extraordinaire, has added a new post to his blog encouraging the use of the PEAR installer to help manage and deploy your website to a production server.   One of the most common tasks that we experience as web developers is synchronizing a development web server with a live site. There are many solutions that have been tried before. [...] However, every single method (described above) has the potential for immediate and catastrophic failure, even with a backup.   He suggests the use of the PEAR installer functionality along with version control to easily deploy a site, allowing for things file dependencies and versioning. So, if files are handled through that package, how is the database managed? Through another PEAR-related feature - the post-install database initialization the Installer makes possible. Check out Greg's post for the full details on how to get you and your site started.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHP-Coding-Practices.com: How I Turned A Slow Array Sort Into A Quick One Using Quicksort AlgorithmZend Developer Zone: PHP Abstract Podcast Episode 4: Planning ProgrammingWeb Development Blog: Save bandwidth with PHProxy and ip2nationJob Posting: Assembleron Ltd Seeks PHP 5/MySQL/Ajax Developers (Reading, UK)PÃ¡draic Brady's Blog: Complex Views with the Zend Framework - Part 6: Setting The TerminologyThe Bakery: Four New Articles - Load Balancing, Request Info, UUID Behavior & Upload ThumbnailsCommunity News: PEAR Installer version 1.6.0 releasedChristopher Kunz's Blog: Building PHP with cURL and libmysqlclient5DevShed: Working with Prepared Queries with PDO Objects in PHP 5Secunia.com: rPath update for gd, php, php-mysql, and php-pgsql
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Scott Mattocks is back with the latest installment of the PHP-GTK news, issue number 22.   It's been a while, but I finally have some time to get back to summing up the world of PHP-GTK. Things have slowed down a little in the past few months on the development side but that doesn't mean that the world of PHP-GTK 2 has stood still.   In this edition, there's a call for help for anyone that would want to join the other (4!) developers in working on the PHP-GTK 2 project as well as some general information about the project and its involvement in the community - from talks at php/db|works, International PHP Conference, and the Zend/PHP Conference to the many PHP-GTK-related articles being printed to a new online resource for PHP-GTK tutorials.
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According to this new post on DynamicWebPges.de and a message from Derick Rethans on the php.internals mailing list, there's an issue with PHP 4.4.5 where sessions are causing segfaults when register_globals is set to "On".   As per Derick:   Because of this I'd like to release a 4.4.6 soon with this fixes. As  there is also an upgrade to pcre 7.0 we'd need at least one RC, which I  plan to release on Thursday.   Users of the PHP 4.4.x series should keep watch for this new update to correct the issue quickly.