Mac + Windows XAMPP off the same directory?

[kai920]

Is this possible? I would like to use the same xampp installation under XP and OS X Leopard.

thanks!

[dmphotography]

I honestly don't know because I haven't touched a mac besides looking at one on display in a store. But why exactly are you wanting to do this?

From what I understand, MAC OS is built off Linux or something like that, so the .dll files are going to be different from a linux install vs. a Windows install.
If you're wanting to transfer your site, simply copy your website's root folder over after installing XAMPP on the new computer. That'd be the easiest I would think.

If you have a forum or something that uses a SQL Database, those are pretty simple to backup and transfer as well.

[kai920]

I'm trying to use Dropbox (http://www.getdropbox.com) to sync xampp so that all my sites and databases can appear on my OS X desktop and Windows XP laptop. If I changed files on my XP laptop, these changes should automatically sync over to my OS X desktop thru DB, and vice versa.

[dmphotography]

Hmmm. That's a good question. Why not make a test site and try it? as long as you keep your directory structure straight and be careful to sync ONLY your database and webpage content, then I don't see why it wouldn't work. But like I mentioned before about the differences in OS's, if you overwrite your DLL files or they get removed from a sync, then it's going to go haywire fast.

That looks like a pretty cool software by the way. There's been times I wished I could've found good syncing software that wasn't expensive and worked.

But yeah, try it experimentally first and then see what happens.

[kai920]

yep I have only recently discovered DB and the free 2GB is great. seems to work well (so far) but I haven't really done much with it other than test syncing a few files.

I'll try installing xampp directly into the DB folder on XP - which will then sync the entire xampp folder/files to my OS X dropbox folder.

I could then point my existing xampp OS X to the 'new' htdocs and database folder location. Is this possible/easy to do?

(Does this sound like a decent plan?)

[dmphotography]

It even sounds like it might be an easy way to clone your server to another PC as a method of backing it up. I haven't done any research yet on the best ways to back your server up. All of the forums, blogs, etc have lil backup addons, but if you're running a couple of sites with these components, then that'd get tedious to maintain.

As far as doing a sync on your entire xampp folder, you're probably going to run into a problem there.
The only two things you should need to sync is your htdocs folder (or whatever you've named it) and your MySQL database. I don't know where that's stored at on the server though, I haven't gone digging for it yet.

What I would do is install XAMPP on MAC using the proper installation version, then do the same on Windows. Next, try replacing the Mac's MySQL database with the one from the Windows server. That would probably be the main issue of compatibility being my guess. Then replace your htdocs folder with the one from the Windows server. This shouldn't be a problem at all.

Maybe someone who knows more about how the MySQL database works can tell you whether or not it can be replaced and still function or not. I just don't know enough about how it works to tell ya on that.

I will try to do some experimenting with it between Windows and Linux once I ever figure out how to get Linux configured correctly and get a better grasp on all that permissions bs. Haha.

Keep us informed on what you discover.