Re: INSTALL file

Rasmus, You're absolutely right! But I'm also right in pointing out that at least 20 different parties have managed to overlook this point, so either the point is not made emphatically enough in the documentation, or appears in the wrong place, or is presented the wrong way. It's a matter of optimal presentation, no one denies that it is there. For example, the lines you cite: cp php.ini-dist /usr/local/lib/php.ini You can edit /usr/local/lib/php.ini file to set PHP options. appear under the following section heading in the INSTALL file: QUICK INSTALL (Static) which is going to be ignored by someone doing a more customized dynamic installation. Comments do appear in the file php.ini-dist, but again the installer is not going to look there unless he knows in advance that this file is potentially important. The location of the php.ini file can also be specified to the configure script, but again the newbie is not going to notice this. This is the sort of issue that is best pointed out by people who are fresh to PHP, and the matter has come up again and again and again in the list, so it is empirically obvious that it is not being presented correctly at present. Cheerio, Rick > From rasmus@linuxcare.com Mon Jul 17 09:36:24 2000 > > > Because you may well want to modify the behavior of PHP after > > installation (through incomplete understanding of the options at > > compile time, or because of changed circumstances), and the supplied > > installation instructions do not make it very clear how to properly > > install the php.ini file, at least under UNIX. We were not the only > > ones to be confused by this point -- I must have seen ~20 other postings > > to the list about this very point. I'm puzzled that you seem puzzled? > > Well, the INSTALL file has always had these lines in it: > > cp php.ini-dist /usr/local/lib/php.ini > You can edit /usr/local/lib/php.ini file to set PHP options. > > That's pretty explicit. > > And for the past week it has had: > > Next you must copy php.ini-dist to the appropriate place (normally > /usr/local/lib/php.ini) and edit it as necessary to set PHP options. > > -Rasmus > >