Brian Swan (of Microsoft) has a new post to his blog today looking at how to use the command line tools for PHP on a Windows Azure platform.

Using the command line tools in that SDK was easy enough, but you had to go through some hassle to get ready to use them (create a special directory, copy your PHP installation, create several special configuration files, etc.). The Interoperability Team at Microsoft recently released a new version of the Windows Azure Command Line Tools for PHP Developers. These tools eliminate some of the hassle I mentioned. In this post, I'll walk you through how to use these tools.

You'll need to already have your own subscription to Windows Azure up and running to follow along, but the instructions are pretty simple:

• Download and install the new command line tools
• Install the latest software development kit for Azure
• Run the Development Fabric to test and be sure things are working

From there hje shows you how to create a package to deploy all of these updates out to the Azure instance with the ull XML and command you'll need to make the push.