DevOps

Intro to Phing

Matt "idev" Plant

• 1 min read

Instead of saying RTFM I will include the highlights from the Phing User Guide (http://www.phing.info/docs/guide/stable/) below.

“Phing is a project build system based on Apache ant. You can do anything with Phing that you could do with a traditional build system like Gnu make, and Phing’s use of simple XML build files and extensible PHP "task” classes make it an easy-to-use and highly flexible build framework.“

It is licensed under LGPL - http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html

"Phing uses XML buildfiles that contain a description of the things to do. The buildfile is structured into targets that contain the actual commands to perform (e.g. commands to copy a file, delete a directory, perform a DB query, etc.). So, to use Phing, you would first write your buildfile and then you would run phing, specifying the target in your buildfile that you want to execute.”

To execute Phing scripts go to the directory with the build file and type execute “phing” from the command line.

Phing base code leverages the PEAR coding standards. As with many projects they do not enforce all of it, but “insist that new contributions have phpdoc comments and make explicitly declarations about public/protected/private variables and methods.”

For available built-in properties and command line arguments see:
http://www.phing.info/docs/guide/stable/chapters/appendixes/AppendixA-FactSheet.html

For more information on core and optional task see:

This was just some of the highlights. Nothing replaces RTFM and hands on experience.