[dev] [PEAR] Fwd: apd help

[Eric Rostetter]

Quoting Rick Emery <rick at emery.homelinux.net>:

> Quoting Jan Schneider <jan at horde.org>:
> 
> > Where did you get apd from? I use the CVS version and I think I've seen a
> > commit message about restoring backwards compatibility wiht older PHP
> > versions. I don't know if this commit is in the latest release.
> > I also use PHP 4.3.1-cvs so I can't help you any further than that.
> 
> I downloaded the tarball from pear.php.net, grabbing what the site called the
> latest (0.4p2); I tried the package installer, but got errors.

I also tried that, and had problems.  So tried the previous one, had problems.
Tried the previous one before that, and it worked.  Apd is very much
dependent on the version of php it seems.

> > Unless you did a debug or ZTS build of PHP the latter three ini settings
> are
> > meaningless.
> 
> This is the problem with using RPMs.

Without inspecting them.  Get the source RPM, and check out the spec file
in it.  The spec files will tell you how it was built. You can then even
rebuild them with new options via the rpm command.  Fast and easy.  (Also,
to see what else it does -- pre/post install scripts in the rpm -- use the
command: rpm -q --scripts rpmname)

> I downloaded and installed the RPMs
> (whatever came with Red Hat 7.3 for apache, 4.2.2 of PHP), so when I read
> postings on a mailing list about building PHP or compiling with certain
> options, I can't relate. I don't know what "build options" were used.

PHP is a special case in that phpinfo() will tell you the configure command
used.  I think apache can also tell you that via a command line switch.  So
in these cases you can find out how the rpm was built.

> I've been thinking about moving away from RPMs. They make things easy, but

Yes, they do.  And if you spend the time to learn about them, they are as
good or better than any other method.  Most people don't take the time to
learn how to use them.  And I admit they are not that easy to learn.

> also
> hide a lot of the details.

Hide?  Well, unless you know how to look. You can actually see all the detail
if you know how.

> I have another machine here with Red Hat 8, and am
> thinking that, this weekend, I'm going to download the apache and php source
> and
> install them from scratch, then install horde.

Or, you could download the source RPMS and rebuild from there.  I ended up
creating my own RPMS for apache/php for RH 8.0 for example...  It gives
me the same results as building by hand from source (because I did that as
part of building the RPM) but also the ease of use of an RPM (same build
across machines, easy to upgrade, install, can share with others as binary,
etc).

> The machine isn't exposed to
> the
> internet, but I think it will be wa good learning experience. Then I can have
> better control and, once I understand what I'm doing, can duplicate it on my
> live web server.

It is good experience, but it gives you no more control than (re)building an
RPM.

This is way off topic, and I apologize for that, but I just want to make
sure we understand that while RPMS are so popular because you don't need
to know any of the details of what's inside, they are also very powerful
and you can indeed know all the details of what is inside if you want.

-- 
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

Why get even? Get odd!