On the Oracle and PHP blog today Christopher Jones has posted a tutorial showing you how to install Oracle support in PHP on a XAMPP setup. Oracle support requires the installation of the OCI8 PHP extension.

This post shows how to install XAMPP on Windows to run PHP applications that connect to a remote Oracle Database.

XAMPP is an open source package that contains Apache, PHP and many PHP 'extensions'. One of these extension is PHP OCI8 which connects to Oracle Database.

The post walks you through each of the steps required to get the combination up and running:

• Downloading and installing XAMPP
• Ensuring thread safety is enabled
• Editing the php.ini to enable the OCI8 module
• Installing the Oracle Instant Client

The post also includes some example code you can use to ensure the connection is up and working, selecting information from the default database.

On the Delicious Brains blog there'a a post that compares four different products for creating local PHP development environments: XAMPP, MAMP, DesktopServer and Local. Both package provide similar functionality but with slight differences.

An easy-to-use local testing server is one of the most important tools in a WordPress developer’s utility belt. Developing in a local environment lets you make changes to dev sites quickly and easily without having to transfer files anywhere and greatly reduces the risk of making breaking changes on a live server.

While many computers are capable of hosting a WordPress site without needing to install any extra packages, there are a few advantages that a dedicated local development environment can offer.

[...] There are quite a few different applications and tools that fit this bill, but for now we’ll be comparing the 4 GUI-based tools that seem to me to be the largest players in this space: XAMPP, MAMP (Pro), DesktopServer, and Local By Flywheel.

The post then walks through each piece of software, covering the installation and getting it up and running with a WordPress application. There's also a mini-review for each with good/bad comments and an overall rating.The post ends with some comments about the author's own preferences, which they use now and which they'd choose in the future.

In a recent post to his blog Stuart Herbert asks his readers where they get their Windows PHP binaries from - there's more than just windows.php.net out there after all.

I’m currently working out installation instructions for phix on Microsoft Windows before my sessions at PHPNW 11 and ZendCon in October...and I need your help, because it has been many years now since I used Windows. If you do your PHP development using Windows on the desktop or laptop, where do you prefer to get your copy of PHP from?

He offers a few options: the obvious windows.php.net, the Microsoft Web Platform or a package like XAMPP/WAMP. In the comments of the post favorites include the Web Platform Installer and windows.php.net with the package versions (XAMPP/WAMP) coming in behind.

Anna Filina has posted a new item to her blog about some of her experiences with PHP 5.3 on the OS X platform including some of the different software she tried (like the Symfony framework).

I wanted to play with Symfony 2 and so needed to install PHP 5.3 on my OSX 10.5. What seemed like a simple task turned into a huge waste of my time. I use MAMP because it’s a nice out-of-the-box solution. The problem is, it still doesn’t ship with 5.3 because it’s waiting for it to be "stable".

She tried to find a way to upgrade MAMP's installation to the latest stable version of PHP but was stopped by dependency errors and opted to go with XAMPP instead to get more of what she needed. She also has included a few edits to the post with more information - how to migrate your virtual hosts from MAMP to XAMPP and migrating over the MySQL structure.

In a recent post to his blog Idrish Laxmidhar walks you through the process of getting Mercury set up for local mailing and used by an XAMPP installation for debugging.

Had tried to make php mail() work on localhost. But had failed. So gave up. This was around 8 months back. Now again some days back had to use the Php mail function on one project. [...] A lot of google searching and some simple steps, I could make it work. So here sharing my experience with you.

He starts with a list of requirements to follow along with his process - a web server, a mail server (in this case Mercury) and a mail client - and then starts into the steps. Each one is accompanied by screenshots showing you exactly what each of the screens should look like as you follow along. In the end you'll have a local mail server you can connect to and test with without ever having to send out a public email.

Cal Evans had an issue - it involved XAMPP, PHP 5.3, PEAR and phar:

If you are installing PHP 5.3 and when you run go-pear.bat you get this: phar "C:xamppphpPEARgo-pear.phar" does not have a signature.

The short method to getting it working correctly is to update your php.ini file with a few small changes to the require_hash setting. Cal goes through the long method he took to finally get to that point - decision on the platform (XAMPP), version of PHP to use and some googling around that lead him to this and this to help resolve his problem.

It turns out that, if that’s on, for security purposes it can't be overridden. Since the default is on, I had to open up my php.ini, find it and set it to off. Once it’s off, everything works just fine.

The Magento eCommerce platform is quickly becoming one of the favorites, but it's also known for being bit tricky. This new tutorial from NETTUTS.com shows you how to take some of the first steps - installation, working with the admin interface and themeing.

Magento is the next generation of eCommerce! It is incredibly well architectured, fully flexible, scalable, and fun to work with. If you've ever thought about creating an online shop, Magento is your choice! Today we are going to install it locally with XAMPP Lite and review the essentials.

The tutorial also helps you to install the XAMPP package - a Windows all-inclusive web platform that includes Apache, MySQL, PHP and phpMyAdmin. Once its started, you can create the database Magento needs and import its data. Log into the admin, change a few settings and you're all set.

Having a development environment on a remote machine (maybe production, maybe test) is nice, but sometimes you just need the speed and simplicity that something a bit more local can give you. Vid Luther talks about setting up just such a local development environment on your Mac. (Sorry Windows guys - maybe check out WAMP)

This post is for the techies who know me, and are switching. Some are coming from Windows, some from Linux, some are designers who need to do some local development. So, I’ll try to keep this post as simple as possible, and perhaps more like a tutorial, where you can "copy and paste" commands and files.

He recommends a few pieces of software that you'll need - things like XAMPP and MySQL - and some other "nice to haves" like TextMate, Subversion and Expandrive. He shows how to set up the shell environment, create virtual hosts and add them into the /etc/hosts file so they'll resolve locally.

Mohammed Berdai has a quick tutorial posted about getting a full installation of PostgreSQL and phpPgAdmin up and working in an XAMPP environment.

XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl, plus many additional modules. The whole package is well integrated and can save a lot of time and hassle for the inexperienced web developer. [...] phpPgAdmin is a web-based administration tool for PostgreSQL, exactly as phpMyAdmin for MySQL.

It's a simple three step process (with a few sub-steps inside each) to get the system up and running - basically: install XAMPP, install PostgreSQL and install phpPgAdmin.

Gyorgy Fekete has provided what he calls a complete guide to PHP development on Mac OS X in a recent blog entry.

Finally, I switched entirely to Mac. It is a little frustrating that there is not a complete resource on how to set up a web development enviroment on Mac OS X. The majority of tutorials are outdated. I will try to write this guide as complete as possible.

The guide provides basic installation instructions for PHP, MySQL (XAMPP or MAMP), the configuration of these two packages, throwing XDebug in to help with your debugging, installing Subversion and picking out your IDE of choice. He also suggests a somewhat optional step - setting up a Windows virtual machine to be able to test things out cross-platform without the need for a separate machine.