[PHP, Win32] Incompatibility of win32 builds with php_gd.dll

[dmorissette]

> Hi Daniel,
> I have a strange problem with creating graphs by means of the php
> functions of jpgraph (see http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph/) while in my
> php.ini mapscript is enabled: extension=php_mapscript_35.dll. mapscript
> itself works ok (e.g. when creating shape files).
> I have made a mapserver application to locate borehole data. Once a user
> has found an interesting well, the person can ask for more information
> with a php query and can retrieve the corresponding well data from the
> database. These data are visualized by a graph made with the nice
> package jpgraph. It takes only a couple of php-lines to create a plot.
> Jpgraph is not compiled as dll but is included as source code in the php
> code. It uses the php_gd.dll. If I enable mapscript within php.ini, I
> see only the little red cross instead of the image.
> I use a W2K box with php-4.1.2, mapscript_35 and jpgraph-1.6.2. It is
> the same with jpgraph-1.7.
> Do you have an idea why these two packages together cause problems?

[dmorissette]

I suspect that the problem is caused by different versions of the GD
library being used in the PHP_GD module and in PHP_MapScript.

We'll keep a note of this and try to sync the GD library that we use for
MapServer builds with the one that PHP distributes on its site, but this
may not happen until we have some time... it could take a little while.

As a workaround, I would recommend that you do not load
php_mapscript.dll and php_gd.dll in your php.ini, but load them as
needed in your script instead using dl().  Then as long as a single
script doesn't load both DLLs at the same time then you shouldn't have
problems any more.

[dmorissette]

Paul, you may run into similar issues with your buttonizer PHP class until 
identical versions of GD are used by MapScript and the php_gd.dll.  Perhaps it 
would be simpler for us to distribute our own php_gd.dll with MapScript?

[dmorissette]

Assefa, what can/should we do about this?  Address this for 4.0 in your builds, 
push to 4.1, or mark as WONTFIX?

[assefa]

I have changed this to 4.1. I will try to build a php_gd2.dll with to be include
with the distribution.

[assefa]

Is this still an issue ? There is a work around (comment #1).
I think I do not want to get into distibuting php_gd.dll any time soon. I like 
the fact that the user can download their own php windows binaries. We did not 
have any major problems on Windows concerning conflicting libs until now for 
general usage  and I think problems should be adressed case by case. I will 
set to to FUTURE just to indicate that It can be adressed *maybe* sometime. 

[dmorissette]

Since this is not currently an active issue for anyone, we'll just make this a
WONTFIX and address specific issues if/when they come up.