I always get distracted when I’m researching technology. It’s like I’m a fashion diva on Rodeo Drive! One minute I’m looking up more information on SQLite and the next I’m trying to decide if I can install the lighttpd web server so it can run from a memory stick. Enter Richard Cockrum and his post How to Use Lighty in a Development Environment. In his post Richard shares how to set up what is referred to as a LiMP stack (Lighttpd, MySQL, PHP) using the packaged solution Lighty2Go. Richard apparently switched to this setup to create a portable (on a USB Flash drive) solution for developing Habari for the Habari Project. Habari is a content management system (read blog) written from the ground up to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies. It works with MySQL and SQLite.
So what’s the point of all this? I’m not entirely sure. I guess it’s that I found out that I can run Lighttpd and PHP on a flash drive, which means I can accomplish my goal of building a stand alone development platform using those tools. I guess I could use the MySQL one that Richard mentions, but I was trying to keep the foot print under control. Should I find a pre-packaged solution that does what I want I’ll be sure to let you know.
