In today’s business world, time is an invaluable commodity. Recently, while doing research for an on-going project, I came across an open-source product that will save you a great deal of time and effort if you are responsible for installing and configuring a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) environment in your organization.

The product is called XAMPP and it is available for Linux, Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X environments. XAMPP is an Apache distribution that includes fully integrated and configured versions of the following components (in the Windows 1.5.1 version):

* Apache HTTPD 2.2.0
* MySQL 5.0.18
* PHP 5.1.1 + 4.4.1 pl1 + PEAR + Switch
* MiniPerl 5.8.7
* mod_ssl 2.0.55
* Openssl 0.9.8a
* PHPMyAdmin 2.7.0 pl1
* XAMPP Control Panel 2.1
* eAccelerator 0.9.4
* Webalizer 2.01-10
* Mercury Mail Transport System for Win32
* FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.10a
* SQLite 2.8.15
* ADODB 4.65
* Zend Optimizer 2.5.10a
* XAMPP Security

Optionally, the following components can also be downloaded and integrated into the XAMPP base distribution (in the Windows 1.5.1 version):

* Perl 5.8.7 - mod_perl 2.0.2
* Python 2.3.5 (soon)
* Tomcat 5.5.9 (soon)
* Cocoon (soon)

The Windows installation bundle comes in two flavors: an automated InstallShield installer which writes minimal information to the Windows Registry or a .zip file which can be unzipped anywhere within the directory structure and does not write any information to the Windows Registry. Removal of the XAMPP product is as simple as running the InstallShield uninstall program or deleting the XAMPP installation directory.

Once installed, many of the XAMPP components can be installed as a Windows service and started via the net start command; and/or they can be controlled via the XAMPP Control Panel. All of the XAMPP components come pre-configured, but you are able to change their configurations using the normal configuration files that are appropriate for each component.

To those of you who would say the mark of a good software engineer is being able to install, integrate and configure all of these components by hand, I would say, these components are a means to an end; they are the foundation upon which you build your application and solve your customer’s business problems. Spend your valuable time solving your customer’s problems and let the talented folks at Apache Friends build your foundation.