On Sat, 20 Mar 2010, Philip Olson wrote: > On Mar 20, 2010, at 8:00 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > * very early on, i might be tempted to have a short section > > explaining how readers can examine the current state of PHP on > > their system, mostly from the command line. when i was starting > > out, i was thrilled to discover "php -m". a short page walking > > readers through something like: > > > > $ php --help > > $ php -v > > $ php -m > > $ php -i > > > > and so on would probably not hurt, and it's something they could > > do with no further background, just to verify that they have a > > working and properly-configured PHP setup. > > Sounds useful, and the command line part was restructured recently > so sections like this can be easily found (and pointed to) without > getting lost. > > - http://php.net/manual/features.commandline > > So early on, this can be referenced. It's difficult to know where a > tutorial should go but we lean towards having them within their > specific topics, as opposed to being lumped together in the "Getting > Started" tutorial. Although there really aren't many tutorials > currently, eventually a tutorial index feels useful. i wasn't suggesting reproducing the entire command-line section. i was more thinking along the lines of something early in the installation section, maybe a very first section, "how can you tell if you have PHP installed already?" if people are truly beginners, they may not even *know* if PHP is on their system. so a simple sequence of commands they can run, with a rationale for them, such as: $ type php # is it here and where is it? $ php -v # what version is it? $ php -m # what modules are loaded? $ php -h # get general help not only would this get a new reader at least typing a few commands, but you can recommend that if they *do* need to install, they can re-use this list as a sanity check to verify the install went well. you might also mention that when they eventually ask for help, people will ask them these very questions, "what version are you running? what modules are loaded?" rday -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry. Web page: http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday ========================================================================
