Posted by Carl Pearson on 12/31/06 22:33

Martin wrote:
> Can someone point me to some "upgrade" instructions?

Never have written down a checklist, but here's a by-hand method. It's
basically copying the new files into the old folder...

1) If you're also running a web server with php (Apache, IIS, etc.),
turn it off.
2) Back up your current PHP folder in case things go awry.
3) Remove everything from the current folder, but leave the folder
itself intact.
4) De-compress the latest ZIP version to the folder.
5) If running a web browser, do a search for php*.dll across your entire
local drive, and in the PHP folder (which now has the new files in it).
Copy over accordingly, making backups of any files copied as well just
to be safe.

That'll do a vanilla upgrade. If you had PEAR or anything else copied
into the PHP folder, you might need to copy it back from your backup. In
the future, if you jump to a majorly higher version, and are also
running a web server, you may need to adjust your server config as well
to account for newly-named dll's.

This has worked for awhile now; when first deciding to run
PHP/Apache/MySQL a couple of years ago I got XAMPP, but after looking at
the configs & realizing nothing of import was being written to the
registry (unless you're running Apache or MySQL as a service) I decided
and old-school cut'n'paste would work fine. After tinkering a bit, it
did. Am currently on PHP 5.2.0, Apache 2.2.3, MySQL 5.0.27

I also keep all my web stuff in subs off a single folder, to make
portability to new machines that much easier. Just copy the entire
folder, run a couple of batch files, and you're up & running on the new
system.

Back up, and have fun. If you have any trouble, drop a line.

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