How many steps are required to deploy your software? Some people say it shouldn't be more than one. I'm little bit more relaxed about it so I would say two steps are still fine. If it takes more than two then most likely you need a build script. [...] Phing is a PHP project build system or build tool based on ​Apache Ant. You can do anything with it that you could do with a traditional build system like GNU make. It use simple XML build files and extensible PHP "task" classes.

He shows how to get it installed via Composer and how to create a simple "build.xml" file with a few targets inside. He shows how to use the "build.properties" configuration file and how to set them from the command line if needed. He also includes details on doing database migrations using the "dbdeploy" tasks.

I'm a huge fan of Phing and use it regularly for build and deployment tasks. Often, I'll ask about a plugin that I wish existed, and get a very courteous "patches welcome" from the nice people in the #phing channel on freenode. This has happened a few times, so I thought I should probably look at how to make a new phing plugin, this article shows you how to make the simplest thing I could think of: a simple "hello world" plugin.

She points you to the location to grab the latest version of the tool (the github repository) and how to define a configuration file for your test runs. Then she includes the sample code showing how to create the "HelloTask" plugin. It takes an input value of "name" and displays a greeting when executed. She shows the syntax for defining this in the XML build file and the sample result when executed.

One of the things I have been focusing on lately is trying to to a better job of mechanizing and automating the process of building and deploying an application. The reason for this is pretty simple: applications just seem to keep getting more and more complicated and intricate as time goes on. [...] Phing is a "project build system" that helps developers manage repetitive tasks associated with preparation and deployment of applications. Phing uses XML based files to allow you the ability to customize the build process to the individual application.

He walks you through the Phing installation (from PEAR, note that you can install it via Composer now too) and how to set up your first project XML definition. He shows you how to add a "target" or step to the build with the basic example of running your app's PHPUnit tests. He also includes a list of other things Phing can do and work with including CodeSniffer checks, FTP handling, version control interfaces and automated documentation.

Phing is a tool designed for automated project building based on Apache Ant distributed as a PEAR extension. It provides the user with the possibility of building the project / application in the same manner as make does with its Makefiles, making complex process execution (which is commonly human error prone) much easier.

He walks you through the steps for getting Phing set up, the directory structure you'll need for your project and a sample build and property files as well as an example of the output from the build execution. He talks about filters, execution control, extensibility and looks at some of the things that he suggests automating.

This article is about how to use Phing in your projects, so a continuous integration server (in this case artifacts for your php application (deployment artifacts, documentation, code metrics, etc). I'll try to show why this will make your life easier when developing or auditing code, generating releases and deploying new versions, trace bugs, etc. All with just a handful of phing tasks.

He introduces the Phing tool and explains how it makes automating the steps of your process simpler, relating it to the Apache Ant tool for those familiar with it. He links to several of the resources used in the process including PHPLoc, DocBlox and the code for the article itself. He outlines the process and, complete with a screenshot of the final result, shows you how to get everything configured and running smoothly.

Suppose you have a web application that is installed on many hosts. Each installation may have a custom configuration, and the application is still in active development. You need an easy way to deploy new features and bug fixes to all of hosts. [...] In this article I show you how to use this knowledge [from this previous article] to write a boilerplate build file, one that can be customized and reused in your real-world applications. We'll use Phing's Subversion tasks to manage the repository and the FileSync extension to synchronize your local installation with a remote server.

He helps you to get the environment set up correctly (installing the needed PEAR packages), create a basic build file with the FTP settings in it and creating a "deploy" target to do the work. He also shows the settings/configuration involved in a "prepare" target that does the SVN work to do some of the pre-push work. Finally, he shows a "release" target that bundles up the files into a package and pushes it up to the server (via FTP).

Roughly a month ago I posted the first in, what should become, a series of development updates concerning Phing. This second blog post details the most important updates during the past four weeks as Phing is moving steadily towards another release (2.4.10 is due out next week).

Updates mentioned in this post are:

• User Guide starts move to DocBook format
• Liquibase docs
• PhpDocumentor
• PHP 5.4 compatibility
• PHAR package
• Various (bug)fixes, the 2.4.10 release (listed)

Check out the full post for more details on each of these topics.

Phing is a PHP project build tool based on Apache Ant. A build system helps you to perform a group of actions using a single command. [...] Phing helps overcome [human error] issues by automating tasks like running unit tests, applying database changes, deploying application code, etc. In this article I'll show you some of the basics of working with Phing.

He includes the commands you'll need to install Phing (if it's not already) via the PEAR installer and a basic "build.xml" file. He explains the parts of the file - tags for "project", "target" "echo" and "property - and includes a more complex build example with multiple targets (and how to call one specifically from the command line).

One of the cooler features of PHP 5.3 is the ability to package up a set of PHP class files and scripts into a single archive, known as a PHAR ("PHp ARchive"). [...] I decided to see how easy it would be to wrap up Neo4jPHP in a PHAR for distribution. [...] Since I also started playing with Phing recently, I decided to see if I could incorporate packaging a project as a PHAR into my build system. It turns out, it's pretty easy, given that Phing has a built-in PharPackage task.

He points you towards Phing's PEAR channel to get the tool installed and includes a command-line call to update your php.ini to allow PHP to generate phar files. Code is included to create the phar-generation stub as well as the XML for the Phing build file. You can find his end result here.

We've created a build script for Phing that will give designers the ability to automatically compress, concatenate, and Prefixize all of their stylesheets and scripts - simply by typing five characters. I'll show you how to use it in this quick tip video.

The post includes a screencast showing you how to get it all set up and working with the rest of your Phing install. They don't help you set up Phing - you'll need that already set up and running to use the task. You can grab teh script directly from github.