Installing the Software and Configuring the Environment for PHP Development
Contributed by Barbara Mityashina
April 25, 2008
To create, run, and debug your PHP projects you need the following software:
- The NetBeans IDE Early Access for PHP. Downloads are available here.
- A web server. Typically development and debugging is performed on a local web server, while the production environment is located on a remote web server. The current version enables using a local server. Using a remote server with FTP access will be supported in future versions. PHP support can be added to a number of web servers (IIS, Xitami, and so on), but most commonly Apache HTTP Server is used. Click here for information on how to install and configure Apache 2.2.
- The PHP engine. The supported version is PHP5. Downloads are available here.
- The PHP debugger. The NetBeans IDE Early Access for PHP allows you to use XDebug, but using a debugger is optional. The recommended version is XDebug 2.0 as it is compatible with PHP5.
- A database server. You can use various database servers while one of the most popular ones is the MySQL server. Downloads are available here.
Note: The recommended version of the product is MySQL Server 5.0. The provided documents describe the work with this version.
The way you install and configure the software required for productive PHP development depends on the operating system you are using.
See the following documents to find the relevant information:
Using All-In-One Packages
To download and install the PHP engine, the Apache HTTP Server, and the MySQL database server as one stack, use one of the following all-in-one packages:
- In the Windows operating system, use the XAMPP package.
- In the Solaris operating system, use the SAMP package
- In the Linux operating system, use the XAMPP for Linux package.
- In the Mac operating system, use the XAMPP Mac OS package.
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