Getting Started with PHP/Ming

One day, I found a site about Ming, a SWF output library and PHP module. Somehow, it attracted me, and gave me a driving force to try it immediately. I tried to read quickly to find things I'd be able to download. I downloaded the source code, the examples, and the precompiled PHP module. When I don't have extra time, sometimes I think, "why compile it myself if someone else has compiled it for me?" Therefore, I fetched the compressed file, uncompressed it into a server running Debian GNU/Linux 2.2.

According to the installation howto, what I'd need to do was just download the PHP module and put the uncompressed php_ming.so to PHP module directory. PHP module directory? Where is it? Aha, simply run php-config --extension-dir. "Piece of cake", I thought.

The last step was adding extension=php_ming.so. I tried the sample code (you'll find it later in this article) -- it didn't work. My intuition told me that it might be because I was using Debian along with the stable packages I apt-got (... err... apt-get in past tense) install. Well, I was right. So, let's discuss about how to do it in Debian.