Upgrading PHP

R0b!n · 01-27-2011, 10:37 AM

Hi I'm a total PHP rookie but I need to upgrade PHP (In windows XP) for a site.

my questions are :
1. How do I upgrade it?
2. what are the risks?
3. Any advice that may come in handy?

Dormilich · 01-27-2011, 10:59 AM

1. that depends on how you installed it.
- if you’re using WAMP or XAMPP, a reinstall of these programmes should suffice (note that they have to state in the description what PHP version they use).
- if you installed via php.net’s provided installer, uninstall it and install the new version.
- if you compiled from scratch, refresh the sources and recompile.

2. forgetting to save your previous php.ini settings

3. occasionally, default behaviour changes. e.g. register_globals is deprecated in PHP 5.3, XML handling changed radically from PHP 4 to PHP 5. nevertheless, all such changes are mentioned in the manual.

R0b!n · 01-27-2011, 11:22 AM

Okay thanks a lot

Dormilich · 01-27-2011, 01:59 PM

on the other hand side, most POSIX systems (e.g. Linux) update PHP when a new version becomes available in their repositories.