I have never developed for WAMP, the hosting guy for my new client says they are using Windows servers, they can setup PHP and MySQL for me, but they cannot switch to a *nix server.
He said there are some nuances from PHP on *nix Vs. win.
So my question is, if I have never programmed PHP on win, should I go through the hassle of switching hosts (since they cannot do *nix themselves), or are the differences slight enough that it shouldn't be too big a problem for me?
(side note: the state of the clients website has no effect since it is a static all-flash site and is going to be completely rebuilt)
Thanks!
I would suggest XAMPP which is a complete LAMP package which will install on either Windows or Linux.
You can do all your development on your local machine this way.
Edit to address the actual question: Before bringing this up with the client, here are some things to consider:
What is your relationship with the client? Is this a one project deal, or do you hope to continue working for them? Either way, do you want to get a good reference from them? Are you a long established service provider with a high level of trust, or a new face who has yet to prove themselves? How would they respond if you suggest that they change? Would they mind switching web hosts?
How comfortable are you working with Windows in general? Can you can use it with moderate skill and comfort?
What is your time frame for project completion? How long would it take to find a new hosting service and get set up? How will this impact your scheduled completion?
Ultimately, if you decide to raise the issue, the client has to decide whether they want to move to a new hosting company. Some factors to consider there include:
How long have they been with this host? How good or bad is the relationship between your client and their hosting company. What contractual obligations are in place between them? Would your client have to pay to leave?
After you finish the initial development, who is going to maintain and administer the system (you or someone at the client company), and which system do they know?
Now, if you want to use Windows, I'll mention that, in addition to XAMPP, the WAMP server, which will run on just about any modern version of Windows. I used it for a class (where it was required), and then on a development system for a project at work that ultimately ran on a Linux server. Both ran Windows XP. I don't recall needing to make any changes when copying the PHP from Windows to Linux, although I did stay away from any functions which would have been platform dependent. FWIW, I found WAMP very easy to set up, administer, and use.
I'd suggest to avoid windows hosting. There is no much difference for the PHP as it already multiplatform, but windows is not an option for the public host. Less performance, less security, less operability.
Also, note that they never administer php installation, so, it will be trouble in support.
Related
PROBLEM:
I've got a client who needs to run their website(uses PHP/MySQL/Apache) from a USB thumb drive on both Windows and Mac, even Linux if possible. So they could plug the USB thumb into a Windows machine and the sites index would load, alternatively plug the thumb into a Mac or Linux machine and voilà the site index loads.
To clarify further, my client essentially wants to distribute these USB thumb drives to his own clients so they can browse a sample group of products uniquely catered too them. This would mean the launching of the site from the USB thumb drive would need to be as simple as possible since no assumptions can be made about the clients technical know how! A a double click and go type solution would be ideal if auto load isn't an option. Is this achievable with a Virtual Machine solution as suggested below in the comments? Or would some software such as VMware Player need to be installed on the clients machine first in order for a Virtual Machine on the USB to be launched?
FINDINGS:
I've managed to get XAMPP Portable Lite installed and running from a USB thumb via Windows 7, however I obviously cannot start XAMPP Portable Lite when connecting the USB to a Mac / Linux system. I've tried installing and running XAMPP for Mac from the USB also, however it can't seem to run outside of the Mac's /Applications directory.
If anyone could please shed some light on a possible way to achieve what my client is wanting using XAMPP or anything else, or whether it's even possible, I would be grateful!!
PS: I noticed there is a solution which would achieve what my client is wanting offered by a company called Stunnix, however they charge a fairly hefty fee, so I'm holding off in the hope a freeware solution to my clients problem exists somewhere.
Fortunately, PHP, MySQL, and Apache all run just fine on all three platforms. Just include statically compiled x86 copies for both platforms, and you're good to go.
Now, as far as the autorun problem goes, there is nothing you can do about that. Almost no system these days will automatically run executables upon inserting removable media.
In general - no, you can't get all-in-one solution. There's too big differences incl. approach to security on these platforms. It's simpler on Windows, while you face more problems on Linux due to security models (like protecting bind to ports <1024). In general, you may need to end with virtualization, if that would suffice for your needs.
I have a VPS account on which I set up a Linux server to host some customer websites, and to upload "previews" of websites before publishing them to the production server.
I develop the websites on my own machine (Windows) and do most of the testing there. Because of the difference in platform, sometimes problems appear on the Linux host, and I could use a debugging interface on that...
My question is how safe is it to have xdebug on a remote public server which would also be used for hosting production websites? Is it possible? Recommended? What do you think?
Thanks...
xdebug is perfectly safe on a remote instance as long as you set the xdebug.remote_host variable. Otherwise it is a MAJOR secuirty problem because it would allow the attacker to view any variable in memory during runtime. It could be used to obtain your mysql login or any other secret variables you may have.
edit: A VPN is a good solution to keep leaking sensitive data over the net in plain text.
XDebug is possible, but not recommended on production, as it can slow your application. You should think the other way round and use linux as a development machine. If you can't (or don't want) to switch to Linux you can stay on Windows and use a virtual machine as a linux development server. If you do, try to be as close as you can as the production environment : same linux distribution, same version of php.
I work on linux and so does everyone in my firm, and the recommended solution in my firm is LXC, a very light virtualization solution. By light I mean it won't take ages to refresh your working tree in your IDE, because you don't have to mount the working tree on the host: the guest filesystem is a subtree of the host filesystem.
This way, I still can have an up-to-date fedora linux for my desktop, and develop on a debian with php 5.2 if I need to (and I need to). The thing is, when the virtual machine is configured for a given project, I can archive it and send it to a colleague that joins the project. This makes starting projects easier for newcomers.
I recently launched a service, meaning I can no longer work directly on the site, or I do so at a risk.
I haven't been able to find any "standard" or "best" way to make a development server. The two things I have seen are
a) Using a GIT or SVN to host the data (this doesn't quite solve my problem, I need to be able to develop somewhere, preferably not my home computer)
b) Capistrano (for Rails, is there something for PHP?)
The current solution I'm looking at is putting a complete copy of the server on "development.domain.com", which would then allow me to work on everything, and I can simply copy the files over to the main section.
Is this a workable solution? What's the optimal solution? (Separate server, special tools, etc.)
EDIT
This system be developed by a number of developers. The server settings have been tweaked considerably to allow for the full functionality and security of the system. Having the development on my own computer is not a workable solution, nor on an intranet type of system as none of our programmers are in the same location.
I'm looking for an on-a-server solution.
Three suggestions:
1) You are on the right track with making sure that your source code is in some form of source control (git and svn are both excellent choices). This should be priority #1.
2) Have EVERYTHING that has deviated from a standard configuration be in some form of source control. This means your apache configs, your php.ini, database configs, etc. Then when you setup your staging and dev servers you can be (relatively) assured that everything is the same across all of your servers, otherwise you are just guessing.
3) Look into some sort of build scripts, either ant, phing, or anything that you can use to reliable build your environment from scratch on any machine.
There are tons of other things you can do, but if you implement these three you'll be well on your way to having the ability to easily setup a dev/staging server. This will also give you the added benefit of ensuring that all of your developers have a similar environment when doing their development as well.
http://www.wampserver.com/ for windows
or
www.mamp.info for mac
or
load up a VM
Personally, I do my programming on a mac, running VMWare with suse or redhat for the server test environment. I've used mamp in the past and it works well; but sometimes I like to work in a real operating system.
That, or setup a physical test server. PHP / (choice of DB) now adays runs on anything (mac, windows, linux)
Depending on what how you want to do it, you could install VMWare right on the production server and dev in there; that is, if you run the server yourself. If your collocated or on shared hosting, you probably can't do that.
-Mario
Your development, staging, and production environments should be exactly the same otherwise you risk the change of something bombing as you move between environments. Obviously your development environment will have development settings (e.g. PHP's display_errors on, possibly a remote debugger, etc) but otherwise they should be as identical as possible.
As everyone else has mentioned if you aren't using version control you as asking for trouble. Not only is this a good practice for development but also eases deployment between your different environments. This is especially true when there are multiple developers working on a project.
I started to use a git repository as starting point. Main development is done on my local mac. At a certain point I push the changes and pull them on a development server where further testing is done. If everything is fine, I pull things on the development server. This is more or less the way, capistrano works, I think. I wrote a central script for these tasks, so I can update development or production servers with a single comand.
In few months I start a project in PHP and I am hesitating to do like usual : develop on my Windows Vista 64bits machine. Since I know few things on Linux, I think it can be a good way to learn by working on a Linux distribution.
Do you think it's a good idea or not? I would run a VirtualBox with Ubuntu (on my Vista64bits). I was thinking to install XAMPP to be able to develop in PHP.
If you think it's a good idea, feel free to suggest me some tutorial about what I should know with Virtualizing an OS, or Linux/dev.
Update
I have build many website in PHP with Windows, the question is more about if it's a good way to start learning Linux by developing on it via a Virtual machine? I have 4 gigs rams, will it be smooth if I install Eclipse in the Virtual Machine? etc.
You should really develop on the same platform where you are going to deploy. I'm not saying it is bad to do differently, but it can save you some pain in the long run. OTOH, you might learn faster about platform differences that way. So, the main question is: do you want to have a production system running ASAP without much headache? Or, you want to spend some time and make some effort to learn how to develop cross-platform stuff?
And yes, there are differences. For example, case sensitive and case in-sensitive filenames. Then, some PHP functions use native C functions that have different implementation. For example, printf() does not produce the same amount of whitespace for some of the types. Resolution of time measurement (milliseconds vs microseconds) can be different, etc. Then, you have different ways filesystem permissions are handled. These are just some recent problems I've found that I can remember off the top of my head.
PHP should be the same on any platform - so where you develop shouldn't matter.
However, in my experience and observation,more sites running PHP are running on Linux than Windows.
Getting Apache and PHP setup on something like Ubuntu or Fedora is a cinch, and testing everything is pretty simple, too.
Also, when you go live with your site, what platform will it be running on? I prefer to do development on the platform it will be running on whenever possible.
Personally, I don't think that for local production you should be using a VM. Would you be running your IDE inside the VM too?
If you are aware enough of the pitfalls of moving between Windows and Linux environments (such as case sensitivity and permissions), you should have no problem developing on Windows and deploying on Linux.
Working on a Linux distribution is defnitely the easiest way to learn it. And setting up some servers and doing some dev work is an excellent start.
Virtualising Linux is also really easy. I've done it quite a few times and it's really obious. Also, going this way will ease you into using Linux, much better than just jumping in and finding out your wireless card is unsupported like I did :)
As for PHP development on Linux... I've done some PHP coding on Windows and on Linux and I can tell you there's very little difference between the two. I use Eclipse on both platforms and Apache &MySQL / XAMPP. The only major difference I've seen is that Linux is much more finicky about permissions and case.
PHP is not the same on all platforms, and until very recently the windows versions had problems which were not found in the Linux versions. Lots of useful features are *nix specific.
I would echo #Milan's sentiments about developing in the deployment environment. You learn a lot more about the deployment environment by doing so too.
On the VM issue, if you want all your Windows tools and your windows machine, setup a linux server in your VM (can have a GUI if you want, but you're going to mainly use it as a server). Set it up so that windows can view the apache install running in your VM and you use samba shares to access the vm's files like a drive in windows. That way, you develop in windows but are testing deploy / setup on a running linux server. While two devs at my shop run Ubuntu, a third needs to use Photoshop and various other bits of windows software all the time, so she uses this method of running a server in a VM but developing from windows.
Oh, and if you're running on Linux, don't use XAMPP! A few simple commands will have you up and running and you'll get a much better understanding of your deploy. XAMPP is fine, but it's for OS's that don't have Linux's package management.
while XAMPP works great, running Apache and PHP on Linux is a given; while on Windows it's something extra you have to do... and support. Also, most parts of the stack are far more optimised and mature for a POSIX environment. The database engine(s) performance is particularly sensitive to the available primitives.
Most OSS runs on windows, but it's a round peg whammed on a square hole.
On principle, I would advise against "learning by doing" in a real project - unless it it really small, or you have doen very similar projects before, so that the learning curve on project related issues would not be steep. In that case you may have ressources free for learning about the developing environment.
Generally I like the Linux environment better than Windows. Mainly because all the CLI tools you would need are provided and Bash beats cmd.ext any time. But with Cygwin I find even Windows a comfortable development environment.
Regarding PHP development I can't really see how it would be much different. Maybe there is some benefit in being forced to make the code more portable (things like line endings, forward slashes in filenames and such) if you use booth systems.
As a desktop or workstation there isn't much difference between the two. I find that the biggest differences lies in how you administer them, but hopefullt you have some other people doing that for you.
In my opinion you needn't to develop in a linux distribution.
Web Development can be done from any OS. I don't know, why you are programming for the web... as a professional? for your personal homepage?
I think, it's enough to get some free webspace running a PHP Server and to upload your files there... it doesn't take you much time and there are less things to manage.
a german student ;)
Use the OS your deployment server will be running, and it is highly probable to be linux. I have recently seen a deployment gone ultra bad cuz it was developed using wampserver and deployed on CentOS. With major differences in apache and PHP config. So know your deployment server and match it as closely as possible.
Try creating a development environment using VmWare Player. I have several Linux environments that I run on my Vista laptop. You could also just dual boot. I use Ubuntu, it is easy.
The side effect of developing inside a VM: more overhead and eventually the needs of additional tools to make the development more comfortable.
Often people need special tools for their development like Photoshop or some vector design tools not available on Linux. If the working copy of the project is inside the VM, it makes sense to have easy access to it. So you will setup SAMBA (which makes often problems with the login from XP) or setup SSL(SFTP)/FTP.
Also you must learn how to use networking with the VM (NAT, bridging, port forwarding).
On the other side, developing on another platform as the target can give some headache. I found myself often confused with .htaccess files for password protection, because oft the different path on Windows/Linux. If you forget to change this entries later on the production server, you have a problem...
A better solution: use the best of both worlds.
A VM eventually running later headless (no gui, more like a "remote server") with Ubuntu/Debian/FreeBSD) and only running the needed servers (Apache, MySQL, FTP, SSH...).
Eclipse or the other development tools on Windows/Mac.
5 years later: My opinion is to use the Linux solution. There are many advantages for using PHP in Linux. The primary reason is the level of help available from the community. PHP seems to be optimized for Linux environments as well.
There is also safety in numbers as an overwhelming number of sites are hosted and run with LAMP solutions. There are a wide range of frameworks and CMS' that run best on Linux with Apache2.
Make your life easier and start learning PHP straight away.
We have various php projects developed on windows (xampp) that need to be deployed to a mix of linux/windows servers.
We've used capistrano in the past to deploy from windows to the linux servers, but recent changes in architecture and windows servers left the old config not working. The recipe works fine for the linux deployment, but setting up the windows servers has required more time than we have right now. Ideas for the Capistrano recipe are valid answers. obviously the windows/linux servers don't share users, so this complicates it a tad (for the capistrano assumption of same username/password everywhere).
Currently we're using svn-update for the windows servers, which i dislike, since it leaves all the svn files hanging on the production servers. (and we still have to manually svn-update them on windows) And manual updating of files using winscp and syncing the directories with their linux counterparts.
My question is, what tools/setup do you suggest to automatize this deployment scenario:
"Various php windows/linux developers deploying to 2+ mixed windows/linux machines"
(ps: we have no problems using linux tools or anything working through cygwin, we simply need to make deployment a simple one-step operation)
edit: Currently we can't work on a all-linux enviroment, we have to deploy to both linux and windows server. We can start the deploy from anywhere, but we'd prefer to be able to do it from either enviroment.
I use 4 different approaches depending on the client environment:
Capistrano and similar tools (effective, but complex)
rsync from + to Windows, Linux, Mac (simple, doesn't enforce discipline)
svn from + to Windows, Linux, Mac (simple, doesn't enforce discipline)
On-server scripts (run through the browser, complex)
There are some requirements that drive what you need:
How much discipline you want to enforce
If you need database (or configuration) migrations (up and/or down)
If you want a static "we're down" page
Who can do the update
Configuration differences between servers
I strongly suggest enforcing enough discipline to save you from yourself: deploy to a development server, allow for upward migrations and simple database restore, and limit who can update the live server to a small number of responsible admins (where the dev server is open to more developers). Also consider pushing via a cron job (to the development server), so there's a daily snapshot of your incremental changes.
Most of the time, I find that either svn or rsync setups are enough, with a few server-side scripts, especially when the admin set is limited to a few developers.
This will probably sound silly but... I used to have this kind of problem all the time until I decided in the end that if I'm always deploying on Linux, I ought really to at least try developing on Linux also. I did. It was pain free. I never went back.
Now. I am not suggesting this is for everyone. But, if you install VirtualBox you could run a Linux install as a local server on your windows box. Share a folder in the virtual machine and you can use all your known and trusted Windows software and techniques and have the piece of mind of knowing that everything is working well on its target platform.
Plus you'll be able to go back to Capistrano (a fine choice) for deployment.
Best of all, if you thought you knew Linux / Unix wait until you use it everyday on your desktop! Who knows you may even like it :)
Capistrano is the nicest deployment tool I've seen. Do the architecture changes make it impossible to fix the configs so it works again?
Why you can't use capistrano anymore?
Why you dislike svn-update?
What things in your app requires an special deployment ?
You can setup svn:ignore property on configuration files, so that svn update doesn't erase them, and then use svn export /target/path/ to get rid of .svn files in your Subversion repository.