Please make a php installation client for windows such as .msi

[luohonen]

Description

Make a php.msi installer, for example, after installation, you can automatically configure environment variables and bring your own composer without additional configuration, which will greatly increase the novice's interest in learning, otherwise there will be fewer and fewer people willing to learn php. For the better development of php, please please please.

PHP Version

PHP8.1

Operating System

No response

[cmb69]

Prior to PHP 5.4.0, we shipped an MSI package, but that was dropped. I don't know the exact reasons, but part of these certainly was the additional work for the rather small benefit; I mean, an installer for CLI wouldn't be a big deal, but if you want to integrate with some Webserver (which may be IIS, NGINX or Apache or maybe something else altogether), that appears to be much harder. And after all, there are popular packages like XAMPP and WAMP which already bring a full fledged PHP dev environment, so why duplicate the effort?

Maybe the reason to drop the installer was that Microsoft offered PHP via their Web Platform Installer; but even if the no longer offer that, or don't provide current PHP versions (I'm not sure about that), there are still the other packages mentioned above.

Oh, and of course there is the issue regarding PECL packages. Should these also be installable via the MSI? That would cause quite some additional work, and there is already https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/pickle which supports installing binary PECL packages (as well as building from source, and multiple version setups). So again, why duplicate the effort?

[luohonen]

XAMPP and WAMP are just one way, because novice learning is just learning a language at the beginning, and should not directly bind apche or nginx or mysql, which increases the complexity of novice, they do not understand their relationship at first, maybe they I just want to simply use php, the zip method can be retained, but the msi installation package should also be used, because php also has a cli mode, nginx or mysql is not necessary, this php is not directly related, maybe they just use it and learning php, because I see that other programming languages have msi installation packages, in fact they can also be used in an integrated environment, it's not a conflict.

[KapitanOczywisty]

I don't think that learning php on windows is a good idea, and most likely you'll end up on linux server anyway. I'd suggest to enable wsl and install ubuntu subsystem, with that installing php requires one command: sudo apt install php.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/

[cmb69]

I don't think that learning php on windows is a good idea, […]

If that is actually the case, we should fade out supporting Windows in the first place. Besides that this would save an aweful lot of work, we would push people in the right direction right away. I don't think, though, that learning PHP on Windows is a bad idea.

[…] and most likely you'll end up on linux server anyway.

Yeah – if you end up on a server at all. PHP is supposed to be a general-purpose scripting language, and if I understand @luohonen correctly, this request is more about the CLI SAPI than about any server SAPI.

I'd suggest to enable wsl and install ubuntu subsystem, […]

While that is certainly a good option, it requires some additional learning for those used to Windows, but not to Linux.

That said, I'm still not convinced that the benefits of shipping Windows installers would be worth the trouble of creating and maintaining them.

[KapitanOczywisty]

If that is actually the case, we should fade out supporting Windows in the first place.

There are legitimate reasons to use PHP on Windows, I just don't think that learning on windows is a good idea. PHP on win have some quirks, and for "novice" will be more painful to configure, even if adding complexity of WSL.

Yeah – if you end up on a server at all.

PHP is useful for building websites, I suspect most people, even while learning only on CLI (which i doubt) will end up making some sort of webpage - which probably will be on some Linux server. If somebody wants to learn PHP to build CLI apps, he probably chose a wrong language. You can say that supposed to be for everything, but in reality its tailored for web backend.

You can look at PHP tutorials, they are all starting with setting up xampp or other kind of web server (e.g. build-in one) or how to upload files to shared hosting.