Test out PHP 5.6alpha1 on Windows 7 / 8 with two clicks

The popular Apache-MySQLP-PHP stack EasyPHP has become very professional, maintained and especially modularized in the last 2 years, and when something new comes out, you can guarantee they offer easy to install add-ons / modules for it. If you develop locally on Windows systems without using Virtualboxes / Vagrant (to work within real unix servers), then EasyPHP is something you should really check out (Note to potential haters: Local develop under Windows / Mac makes sense for people with high frontend focus, rapid prototyping, typical agency work (low amount of backend stuff / using existing software), and for people who simply don’t want to deal with server administration beyond their levels).

Update: PHP 5.6.0alpha3 is out: http://www.easyphp.org/components.php

Fun-Fact: Did you notice that the below screenshot (official one from EasyPHP crew) says “Windows 8 Business Edition” running on “MacBookAir” ? Nice one :)

Today an optional PHP 5.6 alpha 1 component package has been released, it’s installable with two clicks. After installation, simply choose the PHP version from the taskbar menu, EasyPHP will restart Apache automatically.

PHP 5.6.0alpha1 comes with new features such as (incomplete list) :

• constant scalar expressions
• variadic functions
• argument unpacking
• support for large (>2GiB) file uploads
• SSL/TLS improvements
• a new command line debugger called phpdbg

For more information about the new features you can check out the work-in-progress documentation or you can read the full list of changes in the NEWS file contained in the release archive.

Interesting side-fact: They also offer (intentionally) outdated PHP 5.2 version packages, which might be useful it you get in contact with client who have extremely outdated servers running (and there are a lot of them!).