Zend LaunchPad Review - Installation (
Page 3 of 5 )
Overview
The first component of the Zend Launchpad is the installation interface. This
is a shell based program, which asks you a couple of questions, such as your webserver
root directory, etc. and then installs the Zend quality assured php along with
the online configuration interface for PHP.
Commentary
This is probably one of the most flawed parts of the Launchpad as it currently
is packaged, the launchpad installation interface provides no extra ease of use
(and I compile PHP from the CVS version) while providing signifigant limitations
on the person using it. For one thing only the apache webserver is supported in
the Launchpad installation interface, something that I find appalling since many
large corporations may want to use some other type of server with the Zend Launchpad,
such as IIS or even Roxen.
The other part where the installation has a big failing is that it bundles only
a small subset of php's extensions. Many businesses need more than just the PCRE,
MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle 8, XML, WDDX, LDAP, IMAP, GD, DB2 extensions. What if
you want to connect to a Interbase or MSSQL database? What if you want to perform
XSLT transformations with PHP? Then you not only have to brave compiling the different
modules as a Shared Object, but you also must figure out the installation path's
of the "Zend/PHP", no easy task.
I could probably forgive all this if the Launchpad installation program made
it signifigantly easier to install php on your system. But the fact is it doesn't,
you still have to install the apache webserver and all the components that go
along with that. You still have to compile any other modules you want to use with
PHP, such as the XSLT or MSSQL extensions. This makes the Launchpad interface
as it currently stands a failure.
Redemption?
The idea of an installation interface definetly has merit, and I like the direction
Zend is going, however, as it currently stands this part of the Launchpad seems
to be incomplete. If the Launchpad installation provided support for more webservers
(PHP supports natively over 10 different servers, as well as providing CGI support,
which allows it to interface with any webserver), more extensions (even if the
Zend folks mark them as unstable) and they cleaned up the interface (GTK based
installation anyone?), then I think this installation interface would be quite
suitable.
