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Doc Bug #22336 Using Windows Installer version to upgrade PHP, php.ini-dist not supplied
Submitted: 2003-02-20 13:34 UTC Modified: 2005-02-24 18:22 UTC
From: alan at frostick dot com Assigned:
Status: Not a bug Package: Documentation problem
PHP Version: 4.3.0 OS: Windows 98
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
View Developer Edit
 [2003-02-20 13:34 UTC] alan at frostick dot com 
I'm a long-time user of PHP (since PHP/FI days) and regularly upgrade my offline development version as a local webserver on a Windows machine.

A few weeks ago I upgraded to php4.3.0 from 4.0.3 as well as to APACHE-2 and attempted to use the windows installer version, on the grounds its a shorter download. Setup went well, but when I reached the point where it was about to overwrite my php.ini I backed off that stage, thinking I'd need to review my original settings and didn't want my current C:\WINDOWS\php.ini overwritten until I could review it by hand.

What I found when the installer finished it's job was that the files created for me didn't include anything I could base an upgraded version of php.ini on. No php.ini-dist as it used to be called (or even php.ini-recommended as noted in the manual).

In the end I had to download the ZIP version in order to get this document. Since it isn't a very large file, why not include the recommended version in the installer distribution?

On the DOWNLOADS page at php.net it mentions that the installer version contains no extensions. It would be useful if that were amplified somewhat: such as what is included (and possibly what isn't?). What is regarded as "built-in" features in the pre-compiled binary versions have varied over the years and continues to do so with almost every release.

I can supply no scripts or whatever, because nothing seems to be relevant. This is the about the user experience of installing PHP on Windows, and deficiencies in either the documentation of configuring PHP or the downloads page at php.net. Despite searching your bug database and site I fail to see anything like the problem I encountered so am resorting to a bug report. I hope this is not a waste of your time.

ps. I am currently upgrading to 4.3.1 (via the ZIP version) although I think the CGI issue is probably not relevant to my use.

Alan Frostick
www.frostick.com
www.goatrance.de/kernel/

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 [2004-01-24 09:42 UTC] phildriscoll@php.net 
The installer distribution does include php.ini-dist but, 
it edits it and installs it as php.ini for you. It only 
didn't do that for you because you asked it not to. You 
could have made a safe copy of your old php.ini file, and 
then used the settings from the old one as a basis for 
tweaks to the brand new file. 
Alternatively, if you really don't want the installer to 
write a php.ini to your machine, the php.ini file can be 
extracted from the installer executable, as the .exe file 
is in zip format and can be loaded into winzip.
 [2005-02-24 18:22 UTC] alan at frostick dot com 
Thanks for the tip about extracting it from the installer Phil (sorry to be so late in my response) - but if you had the installer make a backup of the original php.ini before overwriting it, maybe no one would have to sweat about it?

Alan
 
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