From the IBM developerWorks phpblog today, there's a new tutorial on getting PHP to compile/build on a Windows machine from the source - PHP 6 (and PHP 5).

These instructions are intended to cover everything that you need to do to be able to build PHP on a Windows XP system. They may work on other Windows systems, I haven't checked. No prior knowledge is assumed, except how to perform basic operations using the windows command line (eg mkdir, copy) and how to use an editor (eg edit) and no software (other than Windows) is assumed to be installed.

The instructions have been tested with PHP6 and PHP5, the only difference being that any references to ICU can be ignored if you are building PHP5.

The tutorial starts with the download of all needed software - Visual C++, a Windows Server 2003 SDK and the .NET framework. The rest is broken up into three steps:

• getting PHP and the prerequisites to prepare for the build
• customizing the build environment (combining Visual Studio and the SDK)
• performing the actual PHP build (including steps to build resolv.lib and running the compile from the command line).

He also points to Elizabeth Smith's tutorial on compiling on Windows for more information.

Mike Potter points out the release of the latest version of Adobe's PHP RIA SDK for public download.

I have updated the PHP RIA SDK to include new releases of AMFPHP (v 1.9 beta) as well as the latest WebORB for PHP release from the Midnight Coders (1.3.2). The free (as in speech) SDK is available now from the Adobe Flex Developer Center. You can join the mailing list to ask questions about the SDK, or if you want more information on connecting PHP and Flex together.

Besides the release, he includes a teaser about some "exciting work" being done in the world of PHP and Flex. Keep and eye out for this great news...

Elizabeth Smith has had an adventure - one where she's tried to get something (seemingly) simple to work on a less than simple platform. She tried to compile PHP 5.2 on Windows with a .Net toolkit. This is her story:

For three days I fought with compiling PHP5.2 on windows. The point was to be able to compile PHP-GTK2 a little more often. [...] I'm always up for learning something new and I thought I had enough google skills and entry level knowledge to get things going. Alas, it has all failed.

She recounts the steps she followed in her effort to get the setup working, including setting up the compile environment (no small task thanks to dependencies for Visual C++ Express Edition) and getting down into the PHP. This causes troubles of its own - from command line options not getting passed to external library dependencies - with the ultimate unfortunate result.

All the way to the end and the linker fails AGAIN. What the heck? So I start doing some searching...turned off EVERYTHING and tried to build and ended up with weird iconv and libxml errors - even with disable-all.

nothing works.

For PHP developers out there interested in harnessing the power of Adobe's Flex technology, Mike Potter has posted the perfect guide for you.

There's not that much to it, but what it does have is great - the step by step process you'll need to get started with all things Flex-y.

If you were listening to my talk last week at the Zend PHP Conference in San Jose, and were interested in Adobe Flex, here's how you can get started with Flex Builder and PHP.

The steps are pretty simple - download, install, watch a demo (FlexTV! woo!), and grab the PHP RIA SDK to make the interface happen. He also recommends getting involved with some of the Adobe-based resources that are out there, including the mailing list for the SDK and the Flex Developer Center.

In his latest blog post, Mike Potter shares some about a simple Flex application he's constructed that's now contained in the PHP RIA SDK from Adobe.

I have created a sample Flex application that lets you browse your MySQL databases and allows you to do simple filtering on that data. The application is part of the PHP RIA SDK by Adobe that I've updated today. It also includes some new samples and libraries, mostly done by community members.

He notes that it's not meant to be a replacement for things like phpMyAdmin, but it does have its place.

Mike Potter has posted an update on the status that Adobe is making for developers, including some new offerings for PHPers.

Over the last several months, Adobe has made enormous progress with software developers. In the few short months since the Macromedia acquisition, we have released new products, opened access to SDKs and continued to create communities of open source software.

We released two RIA SDKs: one for PHP developers and one for Ruby on Rails developers. Both of those are free, as in speech. Head to Google Code for the PHP RIA SDK by Adobe or the Ruby on Rails RIA SDK by Adobe. Join the mailing list for either of them (PHP, Ruby), they're fairly active.

It's great to see a larger company taking such an interest in the dynamic web languages out there and providing good, solid tools for thier developers to use to create bigger and better applications.

Mike Potter has posted an update to his blog about the unofficial Adobe PHP SDK he mentioned earlier with details about new information and corrections that have been added to the guide.

I've updated the (unofficial) Adobe PHP SDK to fix some problems after the initial release. Turns out a few files were missing from the .zip file, and some files were misnamed. I've fixed these problems and also added in a new, more simple sample to show how Flex can retrieve XML data from a PHP backend, without requiring the use of a MySQL database. Finally, I've also removed the .svn files from the .zip file, reducing its size to only 1.5 MB.

You can download this latest version of the guide directly from his blog as well as get involved via the Google Group or requesting access to the SVN repository on Google as well.

According to this new post on the Zend Developer Zone today, Mike Potter from Adobe has announced an unofficial SDK linking PHP and the Adobe RIA technology for each application development.

Mike Potter our buddy over at Adobe, world class programmer and all around great guy, has announced his latest project The (unofficial) Adobe PHP SDK.

Cal also mentions some of the ways to help out and get involved with the SDK project including testing out the samples in the project and helping to improve the look of the samples already in the project.

You can get complete information about the SDK in this post from Mike's blog.

One of the more popular questions I see from budding e-commerce site owners is how to add a payment system to their site. They have the catalogs and shopping carts all set, but they're missing that key piece to handle the transaction. Paypal, one of the largest online payment handlers, has released a new resource to help make life easier - the PayPal Integration Center.

Along with this launch, they have also upgraded the PHP SDK they offer to a shiny, new version - 4.0. According to DynamicWebPages.de, they've added the ability to make a request without an SSL certifiicate, made installation easier, and more.

Their prefered method of installation has moved over to a PEAR-based setup, making it as easy as going to the source directory and calling "pear install package.xml". Of course, not everyone has access to the server their running on (shared hosting), so they provide another method just for them. It's still simple, but requires the inclusion of files on each execution.