Now, everyone I know who designs web applications or online databases is a big fan of XAMPP and I am no exception. I think it is great. It has taken the old concept of PHPTriad (which was good in its day) and it allows people to download and install a simple bundle of Apache, PHP and MySQL. Fantastic.

For example, using their tool you can install the following on Windows with no effort at all:

Apache HTTPD 2.2.0, MySQL 5.0.18, PHP 5.1.1 + 4.4.1 pl1 + PEAR + Switch, MiniPerl 5.8.7, mod_ssl 2.0.55, Openssl 0.9.8a, PHPMyAdmin 2.7.0 pl1, XAMPP Control Panel 2.1, eAccelerator 0.9.4, Webalizer 2.01-10, Mercury Mail Transport System für Win32 und NetWare Systems v4.01a, FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.10a, SQLite 2.8.15, ADODB 4.65, Zend Optimizer 2.5.10a, XAMPP Security.

Over the last few months, I have been using the server environment XAMPP installs quite regularly and it always has been great. One thing I have never managed is to get the TOMCAT and COCOON addons working though. No idea why. Everytime I have tried it comes up with a complaint that I dont have Java, when I do have java.

Madness.

Anyway, today I decided it was time to do my disk housekeeping and clean out all the old files, uninstall all the useless junk a PC accumulates and so on. Part of this involved uninstalling the XAMPP set up I had and downloading / installing the new version (it now comes with Apache 2.2). I also figured this would be a good time to re-try TOMCAT / COCOON just to see.

Anyway, after getting rid of all my files I went to the XAMPP site and yes there is a new version of the basic package and the Perl add-on, but the rest (python, tomcat and cocoon) have all vanished – the links replaced by “Coming sson!” [sic].

Bah. I checked the file names and the old versions I had (eg 2.3.5 for python) are the same as the ones that are coming soon but no links. (Obviously I am stupid enough to have deleted my old copies BEFORE I checked to see if new ones were available.)

Well, what a load of ********.