AMP (Apache/MySQL/PHP) on USB.
I've been thinking of getting a small, working portable development enviroment up and running for a while now. Something that I could take with me and use on what ever PC I was at for the moment. What I didn't want to do was to install the whole package on a PC that wasn't mine so I started thinking of using an USB stick.

After reading a short tutorial over at firepages where he described getting PHP5, Apache and MySQL onto USB I got to work.

After a lot of hacking and cursing around problems with not using the drive letters in php.ini and httpd.conf I decided to try a ready made package:

I went with xampp lite, an appr 50Mb large package that can be found here:
http://www.apachefriends.org/download.php?xampplite-win32-1.4.12-pl1.exe

I unpacked the zip through the downloaded .exe into a folder on the desktop, copied the folder xampplite to the root of the USB, entered the folder and clicked xampp_start.exe

Whoops... a complete WAMP install on usb that works...
This install offers quite a lot, phpmyadmin for example so I uploaded my CMS-beta, loaded the db and started...
It works! Smarty and everyting :)

I'm using a 128 Mb USB 2 memory stick and that's probably minimum if it should be usable.

Now, what are you waiting for... Go try it :)
/Dan