Mike Purcell has a new post to his blog showing a method he's followed to be able to use the popular PHPUnit unit testing software without having to go through the PEAR installer to get there.

PHPUnit is a great tool to protect us developers from introducing new defects when adding new features or re-factoring code. However there is one HUGE downside to PHPUnit; it must be installed using PEAR. Personally, I don't like 'auto-installers', I'd prefer to know what exactly is happening behind the scenes with regards to which libraries are required and how they are being called. [...] After breaking down the PHPUnit source code, I realized it could be installed without going through PEAR, and without too much headache.

He walks you through the directories you'll need to set up (test/vendor), the commands you'll need to get the latest version and unpack it, changes to set up some symlinks and updating the PHPUnit source to modify the autoloader, bootstrap and phpunit executable.

On the Liip blog today Christian Stocker talks about a one-line installer that's been developed to get PHP 5.3 up and working on an OS X 10.6 platform without much hassle. The tool updates everything needed to get a bit more robust version of the language installed and ready for use.

Apple computers and OS X are quite common here at Liip (and local.ch) as developer machines. But while OS X comes with a not-too-old PHP installation, it nevertheless doesn't have everything we need (for example the infamous intl extension) and it's not that easily extendable with self-compiled extensions. [...] Our friends at local.ch took this very dissatisfying situation in their own hands, forked the build-entropy-php script from Marc Liyanage's great entropy work, extended and adjusted it to their (and our) needs.

If you'd like to try out the package on your own systems, you can find it and the full instructions for its use at http://php-osx.liip.ch/. He also points out the actual build part of the process (build-entropy-php) as well as the packager you'll need for it to grab the library updates it needs.

If you've been having issues upgrading to the latest version of PHPUnit (v3.5), Sebastian Bergmann might have the answer to your problems that's related to the PEAR installer and this bug.

The new dependencies of the PHPUnit package, such as PHPUnit_MockObject for instance, are installed first. The PHPUnit package itself is installed last. And herein lies the problem: PHPUnit_MockObject installs the new version of MockObject/Generator.php before the PHPUnit package is upgraded. This upgrade deletes the MockObject/Generator.php file as it previously belonged to the PHPUnit package.

He includes two complete file listings showing the difference in the structure before and after the upgrade. The PEAR installer is at fault due to a misunderstanding it has about where the MockObject/Generator.php file belongs. The only way to fix this, currently, is to force install the new subpackages instead of just an update - DbUnit, PHPUnit_MockObject and PHPUnit_Selenium. Instructions and a resulting files tree are included so you can insure your install is correct.

In a recent post to his site Christian Weiske shares some of the first steps being made toward an installer he's made that could be used for installing PHP applications of just about any type.

Half a year after I collected requirements for a generic PHP application installer, Kore already implemented the first bits of it for the Arbit installer, which is supposed to be generic enough for other PHP applications, too. He also held a talk at the PHP Unconference in Hamburg, collecting more requirements for it. There is already some code in arbit's svn repository which at least generates a .phar file that checks your application requirements and collects configuration options.

An example of a simple build is included that will create the Arbit installer package that, when executed, will give a basic configuration screen. They suggest making .phar files executable by the web server too (interpreted by PHP) just to make things simpler.

On his blog today Brian Swan talks about the Azure command line tools for PHP that are now a part of the Windows Platform Installer (WebPI).

The Windows Azure Command Line Tools for PHP are now available in the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI). This announcement was made on the Interoperability Team blog as part of a post that outlines interoperability elements of a cloud platform. The entire post deserves a close read, but I'm initially most excited about this small piece of the announcement.

This small piece talks about this latest tool release that can be installed directly from the WebPI installer under the Developer Tools section of the interface. You'll still need the Azure SDK to use the tools, but if you don't have it the WebPI installer will download and set it up for you. You can find more info about them here.

On the PEAR blog there's a recent post looking at the month of March so far and some of the PEAR-related happenings that have already popped up.

After a quiet holiday season, the PEAR community has started rumbling again. [...] If this level of activity is anything to judge by, the future of PEAR looks bright for 2010!

Updates this month include a mention of the PEAR project on digg.com, the release of several new package versions for things like Facebook and the Mail package. They've also set up a continuous integration environment to help make the maintenance and testing of the code in the new releases simpler. There's also mentions of Phirum and PEARFarm and how they're lowering the barrier for PEAR installation everywhere.

In a recent post to his blog Benjamin Eberlei looks at how PEAR and PHAR can affect the lifecycle of the development of your application following some of the feedback he got from a previous article on the same topic. In this revised version he talks about the open source project he's started, Pearanha, to bundle all of these ideas together.

First of all, yes the presented solution was somewhat complex, partly because it is still a proposed idea and definitely up for optimizations. However I am still very convinced of my approach, something I should discuss in more detail.

He mentions some of the downfalls that PHP applications have had up until now as far as ease of deployment and the maintaining of dependencies. Most of the suggested solutions aren't optimal, so a system using the PEAR installer would have to overcome some of them and keep it simple to use. Benjamin has taken the PEAR installer and laid his new Pearanha tool on top of it to help you create custom PEAR installer scripts.

On the IIS.net site today (in the Web Platform Installer section) a new walk-through has been published on their latest release of the Web Platform Installer (version 2.0).

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a free tool that makes it simple to download and install the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including the IIS7, SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer.

The platform installer also allows you to install popular PHP-based software quickly and easily on your Windows servers (like WordPress, Drupal and SugarCRM). The walk through helps you to install the software, shows you some of the options you can choose for installable software and what you can find in each of the tabbed sections.

On SitePoint.com today there's a quick tutorial showing how you can quickly and easily install PHP on Windows via the Web Platform Installer.

Earlier this year Microsoft released a small piece of software called the Web Platform Installer (Web PI)'"a dead-simple way to install a complete suite of web software on your Windows machine. [...] To show you how simple it is to use and to give you an idea of what software is available, I'll walk through the installation of PHP with the Web PI, as well as a few key PHP apps from scratch.

Once you have it downloaded and configured, you can go over to the "Web Platform" tab and select PHP to be installed (still in the PHP 5.2 series). Under the web applications tab there's various apps you can also install including WordPress and SugarCRM. Click "Install" and you should be all set - the Installer sets up the webserver (IIS) running PHP and a database (like MySQL or SQL Server).

On the HubFolio site today Matthew Casperson has posted a new tutorial about deploying PHP-GTK applications with the help of the NSIS software (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System).

PHP-GTK is a project that binds the GTK desktop library. Unlike other solutions like Appceletartor Titanium, which create web applications that are distributed like a desktop application, PHP-GTK allows PHP developers to create native desktop applications utilizing the GTK platform. One of the issues with PHP-GTK is distributing the final application. This tutorial steps you through the process of creating a setup package for a simple PHP-GTK application with NSIS and HM NIS Edit.

He shows you how to create a simple PHP-GTK application, package it up with the HM NIS Edit tool and use the wizard to create the new package. Change a few configuration settings and compile the script and you should end up with a nice bundled installer.