jmdirc,
first of all, I really appreciate any one spending his time and attention for helping an unknown guy... and for free!
So the question is only technical, not personal.
Currently, I solved the problem because I managed to write the files that I needed in the include_path where php is able to find them.
As long as I work for myself on my PC or Mac, everything is ok. But I'm concerned about installation and support on others machines.
Since PHP, MySQL and Apache offers plenty configuration options, I try to take benefit from that. In my philosopy, I prefer a software architecture that allows to take in separate spaces:
1) The core platform (xampp in our case)
2) 3.rd party addons (eg. a charting class in the include_path)
3) My own (php) software
4) User specific data.
Since I love the Open Source philosophy, I expect to follow the rule:
"Release early, release often" but I expect also to be able to
"Install quickly, install easy" (the only way to keep the pace...).
Therefore, I prefer to place my SW elsewhere and point to it through configuration parameters.
Now, for instance, I've adopted pChart as a charting library, but imagine that in my next release I decide to adopt a different one: I expect to have a simple mechanism to copy to sent that new class and say "copy it into the folder xxx and copy my new release into the folder yyy and enjoy!"
But if the folder xxx is Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php it is not possible to copy anything unless you open the console, type sudo su <password> then type cp .... feasible, yes, but not practical nor elegant.
I hope you see what I mean (besides linguistic barriers and ruffled feathers
).
Theoretically, the point is pretty simple: PHP allows to have one or more paths where to look for includes. Each path is separated in Unix systems (and I guess also MAC) by a colon : so the statement
include_path = ".:/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php:/Users/michele/PHP/includes" means:
look for the file to include into the following directories
1)
. - the current one
2)
/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php - the XAMPP one
3)
/Users/michele/PHP/includes - my personal one
Unfortunately, the statement is ignored.
I simply reported this BUG and, I repeat again, I edited the right php.ini with the proper syntax.
I'm the first person to admit to make mistakes (sometimes), so if I'm wrong, I humbly beg pardon, but I felt, in this forum, the attitude to think that the problem was MY problem and not a XAMPP problem (maybe...).
As first responsible of solving MY problems, of course, I managed a "turn-around". But as an "Apache-Friend" and an Open-Source supporter I hoped to give a small contribute to warn about what I think is a XAMPP problem.