Differences between debug and release?

I have built my own version of PHP on Windows (CLI) that enables sockets and soap. I did all of my testing using a version I compiled with --enable-debug, and it seems to be working just fine. When I switch to the non-debug build, however, I'm having trouble with a lot of my scripts. Here's a quick sample of what is failing: putenv("PHP_BOB=Bob Jones"); With --enable-debug, this sets this environment variable for the duration of my script. Without --enable-debug, it returns true but appears to have no effect. exec( "dir", $out ); var_dump( $out ); With --enable-debug, this prints out the output array $out which containst the results of the "dir" command. Without --enable-debug, I'm getting an empty array. I have tried searching the online documentation and have set safe_mode_allowed_env_vars and safe_mode_protected_env_vars, but I can't seem to make these simple statements work with my non-debug version of PHP. Can anyone help me out? Tim Larsen Novell, Inc.