The PHP group has made a two quick updates to the recent release of PHP 5.2.6 for the Windows users out there:

The Windows installers and archives were missing the XSL and IMAP extensions.

These updated packages can be downloaded from the Downloads page on PHP.net as usual (with each updated package having a note indicating the change).

Christopher Jones has posted about the latest Instant Client release for the Intel chips running OS X:

Hot off the press, Kuassi points out that Oracle Instant Client for Apple Mac OS X (Intel x86) is now available from the Instant Client page on OTN. It's the latest 10.2.0.4 patchset.

The 10.2.0.4 release of Instant Client for Windows 32bit and Linux x86 have also been released.

The Oracle Instant Client is a lightweight version of the standard Oracle functionality that's not only smaller but allows installation of an Oracle client without having to do the full Oracle install.

A while back Mathew Turland posted a guide for getting a custom version of PHP compiled on a Windows machine.

At the encouragement of Elizabeth Smith, I went through the process (not-so-recently as of this blog entry) of compiling PHP on Windows.

He gives his "laundry list" of things to download/have access to and the link to Elizabeth's tutorial handy. Matthew found a few differences in his compile - an issue with IPv6 support and a pathing problem with the scripts trying to find libmysql.dll. He also throws in his instructions on getting aspell support compiled in.

The PHP-GTK Community Site has posted about an issue that's been found with PHP-GTK on a Windows Vista machine that can cause problems with how the OS handles memory (by Wim Stockman).

My work station is WinXp system and my friend where I had to create it for has the new Vista and somewhere over 9000 pictures to be managed. On my system everything worked fine, but on my friends system i always got the error can not open file.

Further testing revealed that it was the OS at fault - Vista wasn't handling the memory usage for the application correctly. When it was run directly from the file explorer (versus in the PHP-GTK console) though, it worked just fine.

Elizabeth Smith has set out on something she calls the Great Compile Project - her effort to get all dependencies for PHP and PECL compiled on (at the least) Visual Studio 2005 transparently and provided openly.

Anyone crazy enough to help out is more than welcome. I'm currently working on the GTK dependency stack, which will hit quite a few PHP dependencies and PECL extension dependencies in the process. And yes I'd love to submit my hacks/fixes upstream, if someone could find me some information (where do you send libiconv patches?)

Her post mentions some of the things she's already been working on to help further the cause - compiling various Open Source libraries, figuring out issues surrounding MiniGW and some examples of more complex dependency issues she's come across.

On the Developer Tutorials website, Michael Ross has written up a guide to step you through the installation of PHP on a Windows machine (on basically any flavor of Windows too).

Your PC can be turned into a fully capable Web development environment, by installing those three technologies, and configuring them so they communicate with one another. Admittedly, you can simply install and use PHP for its command-line processing. But for creating and testing dynamically generated Web pages on your local machine, then Apache needs to be already installed and working.

If you're wanting to set that part up before you get started and aren't sure how, check out the other tutorial to get started. He works through the process with you, including screenshots of the installer and how to toss MySQL in to the mix.

According to this post on the Zend Developer Zone website (a press release from Zend), they're classifying Windows Server 2008 as being certified "PHP ready".

This announcement is the latest in a series of collaborations between Zend and Microsoft aimed at delivering high performance and reliability for PHP applications running on the Windows Server platform. Several of these enhancements have been contributed back to the PHP community.

As a part of the project, Microsoft has even put effort into ensuring that several of the popular PHP packages (like Mambo and WordPress) work right out of teh box with a Windows Server 2008 installation.

On the Zend Developer Zone today, Andi Gutmans has written up a new post that, in light of a recent announcement from Microsoft about "going open source" with some of their products, asks what it means for the web and for the PHP community specifically.

Today Microsoft announced a significant initiative which aims to provide the developer community with access to a large number of Microsoft protocols and file formats. [...] With Microsoft opening up their specifications under the OSP, open-source communities like Zend Framework are now able to build such solutions without fear of litigation. There are many other areas where it will benefit open-source projects including Samba (SMB), FreeTDS (SQL Server), Mono (.NET), and others...

He shares his thoughts on the winners (Microsoft themselves, Open Source community) and losers (Microsoft's competitors, Linux) on the deal and the beneficial impact he thinks it will all have on the PHP.