Product Review: XAMPP, an Apache Distribution

XAMPP is a collection of free software for installing and using the
Apache Web server. Basically, it is an Apache distribution that includes
the Apache Web server, MySQL, PHP, Perl an FTP server and phpMyAdmin.
XAMPP is available for Linux, Solaris and Windows. According to the
Apache Friends Web site, "The philosophy behind XAMPP is to build an
easy-to-install distribution for developers to get into the world of
Apache."

I discovered XAMPP while searching for an easier way to upgrade to
PHP 4.3.10. A colleague of mine had a server running Red Hat 9, and he
had asked me for help in doing the PHP upgrade. Red Hat is
no longer supporting that particular version, however, and no RPM upgrades
were readily available. Rather than compile Apache and PHP from
source, I decided to give XAMPP a chance.

I must admit that I was skeptical when I first visited the
XAMPP Web
site. I'm not one to buy into the idea that Linux is more complicated
to administer than Windows is, as the XAMPP site claims. But, I also
didn't believe that installing Apache, PHP, Perl and MySQL would be
nearly as easy as the Web site claimed, "just download, extract and
start".

I was dramatically wrong. The XAMPP installation involved two steps. First, I
downloaded
XAMPP for
Linux from the site. Second, from the command line, I went to the
directory where the XAMPP download was saved and issued this command:

tar xzvf xampp-linux-1.4.11.tar.gz -C /opt

That was it. No, I did not leave out any steps. With those two steps
complete, XAMPP was installed in /opt/lampp.

You can start the newly installed applications by issuing
/opt/lampp/lampp. This command starts up
Apache with PHP 5.0.3, MySQL 4.1.8 and ProFTP. To stop all the currently
running applications, use /opt/lampp/lampp stop.

The server I was working on did not need MySQL, however, nor did I want
to have ProFTP running. Fortunately, individual start and stop commands
are provided by XAMPP for each of the applications offered. To start
individual applications, use any of the following commands:

• /opt/lampp/lampp
  startapache
• /opt/lampp/lampp
  startmysql
• /opt/lampp/lampp
  startftp

One addition to the above list is /opt/lampp/lampp
startssl, which enables SSL support in Apache.

The stop commands, as I'm sure you've guessed, are:

• /opt/lampp/lampp
  stopapache
• /opt/lampp/lampp
  stopmysql
• /opt/lampp/lampp
  stopftp

XAMPP was compiled specifically for developers, and it is an extremely
easy way for developers to set up a local LAMP installation for the
applications they are developing. In fact, one of the great uses of XAMPP
is its ability to switch between PHP 4 and PHP 5. I have spoken with many
developers who have informed me that applications they developed for PHP 4
do not work properly under PHP 5. XAMPP is a great way for these developers to
switch easily between the two versions to test their application's migration
to PHP 5. The commands to switch between PHP 4 and 5 are
/opt/lampp/lampp php4 and
/opt/lampp/lampp php5.

In addition to the previously mentioned applications, the default
installation also includes several demo PHP applications and a handful
of Web-based tools. Figure 1 shows a browser window pointed at a site
running XAMPP.
Figure 1. Default XAMPP Page
As you can see, the Web-based tools offered by XAMPP include phpMyAdmin,
a PHP-based MySQL administration tool; phpSQLLiteAdmin, a PHP-based tool
to administer the embedded SQL database; and Webalizer, a site statistic
tool written in C.

All in all, XAMPP is a great development tool. The ease with
which anyone can install XAMPP certainly helps to dispel the myth
that Linux applications are hard or complicated to install. In addition,
the demo applications provided in the XAMPP distribution can help new
developers find their way in using Apache, PHP and Perl. I look forward
to working more with the XAMPP tools and showing this great
collaborative collection to other developers.