Where is php.ini-development on Ubuntu LAMP?

Question

On my development machine I run Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS. Following the official documentation, I used the following command to install Apache, MySQL and PHP in one go:

sudo tasksel install lamp-server

Now that I'm testing my PHP scripts, I want to enable "developer mode", if there is one, to enable error reporting and logging. I have read reference to files php.ini-production and php.ini-development that apparently come with some versions of PHP 5, but not the one I have installed.

All I have is /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini. This configuration does not echo errors or warnings, which makes my scripts hard to debug. I guess I can edit the configuration by hand, but I'd rather just be able to drop in a replacement if that's possible.

So what I'm looking for is an easy way to switch between development and production environments for PHP!

Answer 1

php.ini-development and php.ini-production, which come with the PHP 5.3 package, are really just examples of recommended settings. You should review the settings and make sure that they apply to your use and copy them to the regular php.ini file location. On my Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS (lucid) server, here’s where I find mine:

# locate php.ini-development
/usr/share/doc/php5-common/examples/php.ini-development

The alternative example, php.ini-production, is in the same directory.