PHP Windows Distro

Standard build:
php-5.2.2RC2-Win32.zip
php-5.2.2RC2-win32-installer.msi
pecl-5.2.2RC2-Win32.zip
php-debug-pack-5.2.2RC2-Win32.zip

And FastCGI build (with no thread safety):
php-5.2.2RC2-nts-Win32.zip
pecl-5.2.2RC2-nts-Win32.zip
php-debug-pack-5.2.2RC2-nts-Win32.zip

We are back to using VC6 compiler for the official PHP Windows build. VC8 (Visual Studio 2005) was causing trouble with loading the new C runtime. You can read about the details of the problems encoutered in this thread. So I had to make yet another build, this time using good old VC6.

I have made a build of 5.2.1RC2 for Windows with no thread safety enabled. This will only work for non threaded SAPIs such as CGI/FastCGI and CLI. The reason for this is that managing per thread state takes some CPU time from the main task of running PHP scripts making non thread safe PHP significantly faster. My initial benchmarks show 20-30% performance increase.

This, together with the new FastCGI implementation for IIS from Microsoft should bring PHP performance on Windows to a new level.

php-5.2.1RC2-nts-Win32.zip
(76aa90a7fdb0bd2eb62c1172501d6c6e)
pecl-5.2.1RC2-nts-Win32.zip
(a493bdf794a5d44d749f6dcd2a55f9da)
php-debug-pack-5.2.1RC2-nts-Win32.zip
(cbfd474fcdb61522d4c750b5c02d3df9)

Derick made the PHP-4.4.5RC1 available for download. Hot on its heels comes the Windows build:

php-4.4.5RC1-Win32.zip
(def20de760f4eca337ffddbc264441ef)

Here is the comparison of running Zend/bench.php from the PHP source using VC++ 8.0 (Visual Studio 2005) and VC++ 6.0. The test was done on my Lenovo laptop with Celron M 1.6 GHz processor and 1.5 GB ram.

Test	VC8	VC6	%
simple	0,444	0,490	9%
simplecall	0,650	0,738	12%
simpleucall	1,220	1,235	1%
simpleudcall	1,634	1,591	-3%
mandel	1,390	1,519	8%
mandel2	1,712	1,909	10%
ackermann(7)	1,637	1,844	11%
ary(50000)	0,069	0,075	8%
ary2(50000)	0,061	0,061	0%
ary3(2000)	0,808	0,876	8%
fibo(30)	5,383	4,970	-8%
hash1(50000)	0,133	0,147	10%
hash2(500)	0,118	0,130	9%
heapsort(20000)	0,462	0,454	-2%
matrix(20)	0,373	0,375	1%
nestedloop(12)	0,789	0,855	8%
sieve(30)	0,350	0,390	10%
strcat(200000)	0,127	0,140	9%
Total	17,362	17,800	2%

Well the first build proved to be somewhat less that a full success. It worked only on one computer: the one that was build on. Since this limits PHP use on the Windows platform I went ahead and read about Microsoft manifest files, SxS (side by side) assemblies and other wonderful stuff that Microsoft has provided for us in version 2005 of their development package.

You should be able to use this package without installing any packages from Microsoft. Normally a VC++ redistributable would be required. Helpful information for those that are wrestling with similar problem is described in MSDN article Deploy using XCopy.

You can download this build from:

php-5.2.1RC2-dev-Win32.zip
pecl-5.2.1RC2-dev-Win32.zip

I have just completed the first build of the current php-5.2 CVS using the new compiler from Microsoft. The file is avaliable at php-5.2.1RC2-dev-Win32.zip.

Since this is the first build using the new tool set any help in testing it would be greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: Thanks for the feedback. It seems that the binary does not work without the .manifest files being built in into the executables. I'm investigating how to do this with the new compiler.

The official PHP binaries for Windows are built using a very old version of Microsoft Visiual Studio C++. We are still using version 6.0 that was released back in 1998. That's pretty ancient for a piece of computer software.

The reason for this was very simple. That was the only version I had license too, and bying Microsft tools can be very expensive affair. But now it seems the time for the good old version of VC++ has run out. Andi Gutmans said that the effort Zend is making in cooperation with Microsoft to improve PHP on Windows depends partly on the optimizations that are only available in the newest version of Microsoft's C++ compiler. Thanks to Wez' contats at Microsoft, I will be getting development tools so I'm expecting to get a copy of VC++ 2005 in the next few weeks.

I will be upgrading our build to the free Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition in the meanwhile which should contain the same compiler as its commercial big brother.

This systems upgrade will have some effects on our build/release infrastructure as it contains new Microsoft C runtime library (msvcrt71.dll). This means that we have to shop the runtime with PHP distribution from now on. It can also cause some incompatibilities with the libraries we use at the moment so the transition could be less than smooth.

It could also mean that we will not longer be able to provide pecl4win builds for versions of PHP eariler than 5.2, but I'm not entirely certain about this.

I will probably try to rebuild 5.2.1RC1 with the new compiler and see how it goes. Of course extra testing at this moment would be extra appreciated!

You can get it using the following links.

php-5.2.1RC1-Win32.zip

php-5.2.1RC1-win32-installer.msi

pecl-5.2.1RC1-Win32.zip

php-debug-pack-5.2.1RC1-Win32.zip

You can get it using the following links.

php-5.2.0RC6-Win32.zip

php-5.2.0RC6-win32-installer.msi

pecl-5.2.0RC6-Win32.zip

php-debug-pack-5.2.0RC6-Win32.zip

Ilia packed PHP-5.2.0RC5 yesterday. The windows build is ready as well.

php-5.2.0RC5-Win32.zip

php-5.2.0RC5-win32-installer.msi

pecl-5.2.0RC5-Win32.zip

php-debug-pack-5.2.0RC5-Win32.zip

This build is featuring the new installer contributed by John Mertic so testing it before the final release would be appreciated.

php-5.2.0RC4-Win32.zip
(b14008ffcae75a4373182fe9ad24f624)

php-5.2.0RC4-win32-installer.msi
(722fb79e7b9ebd3146b182dfe7177f8d)

pecl-5.2.0RC4-Win32.zip
(76d337d1cce5412d76f71143df78bf19)

php-debug-pack-5.2.0RC4-Win32.zip
(166e470bd7a2983ae82da14b674b7944)

Several people have mailed me asking if it was possible to download all Pecl4Win extensions for a given branch at once. Now that is possible from the branches page of the Pecl4Win site.

The code was implemented using the new zip extension that has just been promoted to beta. I really liked its OO interface, check it out.

For those that don't know Pecl4Win site provides PHP users on the Windows platform the opportunity do download precompiled PECL extensions.

So far Pecl4Win supported PHP version 4.3.x, 4.4.x, 5.0.x, 5.1.x and 6.0.x. From now on, the site will compile PECL extensions that are compatible with the upcoming PHP 5.2.0 too.

Developers might benefit from compilation logs that can explain why some PECL extension does't compile on Windows, etc. The logs are available for other supported branches as well.

One of the cool new things for PHP users on Windows in the upcoming version 5.2 would be a brand new installer. It was created by John Mertic and the preview can be downloaded and tested. Feedback on how well it works is of course very welcome.