Different types of WAMP's?

Question

"WAMP" is an acronym formed from the initials of the operating system (Windows) and the package's principal components: Apache, MySQL and PHP (or Perl or Python).

Personally I use XAMPP Lite, but thats because I haven't tried anything else. I've just been looking as to how to install SQLBuddy on it, and can't find out.

I've heard about the Uniform Server as well as WAMP5.

What WAMP do you use and why?

Answer 1

I currently use XAMPP. Easy to setup and turn on and off. It comes with everything you would need for a basic server setup. However, I have been thinking about switching to WAMP5 due to the amount of flexibility it gives you without manual configuration. You will most likely be able to manage your whole server configuration and replicate your production environment without even having to touch the command line. Not that command line isn't fun ;).

Answer 2

I use MAMP for OS X.

http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html

Answer 3

I'm using WampServer 2.0 on my dev box at the moment. It installed without a hitch. I upgraded the included PHP 5.2.9 to PHP 5.3 with no problem. Since most of my solutions are deployed on LAMP stacks, it's nice to dev in an environment that is very close to the production target. While it's not 100% identical for obvious reasons, it's been no trouble to migrate apps from dev to production. I suppose there are ways you could code to make it harder, but I just "don't do that" :P Obvious exception: system calls.

Answer 4

When I have a powerful enough computer, I generally use a Virtual Machine (with eiter VMWare or VirtualBox), in which I install a minimalist LAMP stack.

Why ?

• At work, my computer is generally running Windows (company policy and all that)
• Using a LAMP platform as development server is closer to the production server (The production servers for the applications I'm working on is almost always Linux)
• With a powerful enough computer (You'll need at least a dual-core with 2GB RAM), running Apache + PHP + MySQL in a Virtual Machine is not slower than running them on the "real computer" (I've done benchmarks on my machine and a couple of colleagues ones)
• Using a LAMP stack on developpers machines allows them to work at least a little bit with Linux and a shell -- which is good : this way, the day they have to do something on the production server, it won't be the first time they see a command line interface !

One you've done it a couple of times, installing/configuring a minimalist LAMP stack in a virtual machine takes no more time than doing it on Windows ; and once 1 developper has done it, he can give a copy of his VM to the other developpers (which means they just have to install VMWare player and use that VM, and not install a WAMP stack by themselves)

Answer 5

I personally use good old manually installed and configured Apache 2.2, PHP 5.3.0, MySQL 5.0.X, PostgreSQL 8.4.

I never liked pre-built stack as I was never able to replicate production close enough.

Answer 6

Haven't tried it yet but Zend has released it own Zend Server solution:

http://www.zend.com/en/products/server-ce/index