- people (Daniel Convissor) report that it is possible to not do this, but set PATH to include the PHP folder and the dlls folder below the PHP folder (for PHP 4) + set PHPRC
You shouldn't even need to set PHPRC, as PHP should pick up the php.ini location from the location of the php DLL. (caveat emptor: I think we have a bug with GetModulePath; it will check the dir that contains the .exe that loads the dll, not the dir where the dll resides).
Well, the problem is that Nuno reports that under Apache 2, the path of the apache binary is used (the exe file path as you point out), so the system searches for php4ts.dll and php.ini there. This is why it does not work with side by side installation. You need to copy/move the dll files to the apache bin folder, which seems to be problematic enough...
If you're loading an extension such as curl, that loads other DLLs, I found that under apache you need to set the PATH to include that folder that contains those (eg: php4 or php5 dir). IIS seems to chdir during loading, or pass some other magic flags to LoadLibrary(), as this step doesn't always seem necessary there.
Nuno is unable to confirm this, the PATH setting does not seem to work for him. I have no windows at all to test, so I am only able to shout into the game from outside...
Goba
