PEAR consists of literally hundreds of
packages (libraries) that help you to build your PHP applications faster,
less error-prone and more secure. Millions of web applications use and
rely on the proper functioning of PEAR packages.
To ensure constant quality, many packages utilize phpt or
PHPUnit tests that are run during development and
before each release. They help us making sure new features or bug fixes
do not break existing functionality.
One of hard to solve challenges is ensuring that a package's unit tests
do not only run on the specific PHP version the developers have installed
on their machines (which often is the latest and greatest, maybe not even
released version from SVN), but to cover the whole range of supported
PHP versions. This goal can be achieved in several ways:
- Test on different machines with another PHP version on each
- Test on different PHP versions on one machine
Solution number 1 requires either much hardware or at least quite some setup
time for virtual machines. Besides that, running tests regularly on many
different machines needs automated deployment tools - you won't ssh into
the 15th machine manually, let alone setting up database servers and other
software that might be required.
There is no single Linux distribution I know of that supports installing multiple
versions of PHP beside each other - making solution number 2 similar
daunting to setup and running as #1. The benefits above #1 are obvious:
All software on one machine means easier deployment because the software
to test needs to be setup only once. Software dependencies need to be
installed only once. Executing the tests is easier if all versions of
PHP are on this single machine, which means that the cross-version tests
can be automated really easily.
A tool to solve all problems with the multiple-php-versions-on-one-machine
solution is
phpfarm.
The best way to demonstrate its easiness is probably a shellshot:
$ svn co http://svn.php.net/repository/pear/ci/phpfarm/trunk/ phpfarm
$ cd phpfarm/src
$ ./compile 5.3.2
... fetching sources from php.net
... configuring
... compiling
... installing
... fetching and setting up pyrus
$ php-5.3.2 --version
PHP 5.3.2 (cli) (built: Mar 10 2010 18:08:27) (DEBUG)
Copyright (c) 1997-2010 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies
$ pyrus-5.3.2 --version
Pyrus version 2.0.0a1 SHA-1: 2FDFB5E00A6D707437DBC047AAF9D115C6484D90
Using PEAR installation found at /home/cweiske/Dev/cvs/pear/phpfarm/inst/php-5.3.2/pear
php pyrus.phar version 2.0.0a1.
That's it. With one single command, you can install each version of
PHP you like, and you get
pyrus, the next-generation
PEAR installer for free! Let's try it:
$ pyrus-5.3.2 channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
Discovery of channel pear.phpunit.de successful
$ pyrus-5.3.2 install phpunit/phpunit
...
Installed pear.phpunit.de/PHPUnit-3.4.11
$ pyrus-5.3.2 list-packages
Listing installed packages [/home/cweiske/Dev/cvs/pear/phpfarm/inst/php-5.3.2/pear]:
[channel pear.phpunit.de]:
PHPUnit
phpfarm automatically sets up your php.ini with the values you desire.
It sets your include_path. It lets you specify custom configuration
options, per patch, minor or major PHP version - just have a look
at the
README.
Now everything is ready for you (and us PEAR developers!) to let the unit tests
run on all the little PHP versions we want to. Did I tell you that
phpfarm also installs php-cgi versions? My next blog entry will show you how
to run dozens of php versions simultaneously in apache.
If you have questions or suggestions about phpfarm, don't hesitate to ask
on the pear-general
mailing list
(subscription info)
or on the #pear IRC channel.
Happy testing!
