Upgrade or Separate Installation?

I have been using a prepackaged WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP)
installation and along the way (over several years) have modified this
and that, added vhosts, modified php.ini the way I want, set up a live
php manual (docref_root), moved DLLs, and a thousand other things.

Problem is, I have not had to modify anything in a *long* time.
Everything works wonderfully as is, I just want to try out some newer
features (> 5.0.4).

Quite frankly, I am not confident in my knowledge of the upgrade process
(yes I have read the documentation, I don't find it that helpful).

I am beginning to think it would be safer to just create a separate
installation of PHP and point a vhost to it or something.

Am I being paranoid or is there some *really* simple instructions
somewhere for upgrading just PHP on a Windows system?

--
-Lost
Remove the extra words to reply by e-mail. Don't e-mail me. I am
kidding. No I am not.

Hi -Lost,

I have been running several versions of php next to eachother with WAM.
Nowadays with apache2 i use a batch job like this to start apache:

path c:\php521;%path%
"C:\Program Files\Apache2\bin\Apache.exe" -w -f "C:\Program
Files\Apache2\conf\httpd_php521.conf" -d "C:\Program Files\Apache2\."

To set this up i first download php as a zip package. I put it to its
own folder, like php521 for version 5.2.1, and copy (within this folder)
php.ini-dist to php.ini. Then i copy httpd.conf to httpd_phpxxx.conf
(where xxx is the version number). Then i edit httpd_phpxxx.conf
manually according to
http://www.php.net/manual/en/install...ws.apache2.php

You may have to edit your system PATH so that the old php folder is no
longer in it. Then if you want to run apache with your old php version
you will need another batch job to set the path for that version (the
path statements only affect the command box in wich the batch job is
running)

With older versions of apache and php i used to copy php.ini to the
apache folder so that php could find it and copy httpd_phpxxx.conf to
httpd.conf. I am not sure wheather that was necessary but i am sure it
worked.

After you have got apache running with the new config, phpinfo should
show you are running the right php version. You will have some more
configuring to do (in php.ini) to get the MySQL and other extensions
available.

I agree all this takes some puzzling, but in the end there are only a
few lines you need to change in each ini file, so IMHP the installation
instructions look more complicated then they really are when you take
the time to read and try it out.

Greetings, success,

Henk Verhoeven,
www.phpPeanuts.org.

-Lost schreef:
> I have been using a prepackaged WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP)
> installation and along the way (over several years) have modified this
> and that, added vhosts, modified php.ini the way I want, set up a live
> php manual (docref_root), moved DLLs, and a thousand other things.
>
> Problem is, I have not had to modify anything in a *long* time.
> Everything works wonderfully as is, I just want to try out some newer
> features (> 5.0.4).
>
> Quite frankly, I am not confident in my knowledge of the upgrade process
> (yes I have read the documentation, I don't find it that helpful).
>
> I am beginning to think it would be safer to just create a separate
> installation of PHP and point a vhost to it or something.
>
> Am I being paranoid or is there some *really* simple instructions
> somewhere for upgrading just PHP on a Windows system?
>