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Building PHP with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Express

Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2007 1:59 pm
by Ambush Commander
I'm not really interested in building Windows, per-say, as the binaries distributed by the PHP website are good enough. However, I need to build an extension against a different external library on Windows, and it seems the only way to do that is piggy-back off of PHP's build process.

The most accessible version of Microsoft Visual Studio is "Express 2005", which is not what the build instructions for Windows specify, but it's a later version so it should work? Apparently not: this version appears to be missing the MC.exe executable, or Message Compiler, so nmake fails. I'm not sure if this is because I'm using the "Express" version, or I have a corrupt install.

I'm currently trying to get my hands on VS6, which apparently is much better supported and will go more smoothly, but it's tough to find. Has anyone ever successfully compiled PHP on Windows?

Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 12:54 am
by timvw
Compiling php with vs2005 (pro) was cumbersome (i don't remember if i succeeded or not, but it was a pita trying to get it to compile)... There is a free ms-vc6.0 edition out there (which makes building php easy) but i can't find it anymore...

Anyway, check out http://elizabethmariesmith.com/2006/11/ ... -possible/ and it's comments ;)

Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 7:22 am
by Ambush Commander
Excellent. I'll try those instructions out.

Microsoft's behavior in this area is absolutely infuriating. If there's one thing about open-source software I like, it's that they keep old versions hanging around.