per directory ini file overides.

Wouldn't that be nice? I reckon you should be able to drop a php.ini file into a directory where your scripts are and it could then contain directives which overide the globabl settings. That way you could solve problems like register globals and magic quotes on a per directory (application) bases. As an extension to that, the file should optionally apply to cascading subdirectories (recursive mode). Perhaps this could be done by virtue of it's file name. so _php.ini applies to the current directory, and __php.ini applies to all sub-directories. What say ye all? I know all the crap could be achived with include files but that's just messy and is way too much trouble when the whole reason why you're doing it is to install some off-the-shelf app. Doing it this way means developers can distribute an app with one __php.ini file in the top dir and everything would look after itself. It goes without saying that this is _not_ a substitute for good programming.