New version of the Command-Line Tools for PHP to Deploy Applications on Windows Azure

Today at Tek-X during the “Tips & Tricks to get the most of PHP with IIS, and the Windows Azure Cloud” session, Microsoft showcased the new version of the Windows Azure Command-line Tool for PHP available for download under an open source BSD license at: http://azurephptools.codeplex.com/.

Announced in March 2010, the Windows Azure Command-line Tool for PHP enables developers to easily package and deploy new or existing PHP applications to Windows Azure using a simple command-line tool without an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Developers have an option of deploying to the Development Fabric (a sort of local cloud for development and test) or directly to the Windows Azure Cloud. The new version of the Windows Azure Command-line Tool for PHP supports both Web and Worker service roles allowing developers the freedom to customize their applications to their needs (Web roles are the internet facing applications, and Worker roles are for background tasks).

This project initially was started as the result of feedback we received from PHP developers who are using various IDEs (or none), who told us that a command-line tool would be a great addition to the Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse project.

To get familiar with the tools you can read this post New command-line tool for PHP to deploy applications on Windows Azure or watch this video on Channel9 where I presented the new features and demo how to deploy a PHP application (using WordPress with SQL Server Build) to Windows Azure:

This demo is actually an abstract of the “Welcome to the Cloud: Windows Azure Command-line tools for PHP” webcast I presented last Friday as part of the PHP Architect webcast series. The entire recording will be available soon at: http://www.phparch.com/. Stay tuned!

As always, if you have feedback, questions, or wishes, please join us on the project site: http://azurephptools.codeplex.com/.

Additional links:

• Building PHP Applications using the Windows Azure PlatformWindow Azure Interoperability Overview
• Blog posts related to Azure Interoperability
• Technical Bridges related to Windows Azure

· Running WordPress on Windows with SQL Server: http://wordpress.visitmix.com/

Sumit Chawla, Technical PM/Architect, Microsoft Interoperability Strategy Team