The Joel on Software Discussion Group

I understand why Joel created Wasabi... because some people use Windows servers, and some use Linux, and this outputs languages that run on both.... but wait, isn't there already a language that runs on both?  If he's already creating PHP, why not just do the whole schbang in PHP, since that can also run on IIS. 

I know FogBugz was originally started in ASP back in the day, which is how it made this progression, but surely the time spent making a compiler, a custom language etc... could have been more easily spent rewriting the whole thing in PHP?  Or am I missing something?

PHP doesn't run out of the box on IIS. You have to download it and set it up. And from my experience the setup is different on XP and 2003 Server just to make life slightly more irritating.

By making it ASP-based for a Windows platform, it reduces the amount of installation headaches the end user is likely to have setting it up. And by making that easier, it's more likely to lead to more satisfied customers.

PHP doesn't run out of the box on IIS no, but it's not that hard to set up (from memory, here's how you install php4)

1) unzip zip file
2) copy php4ts.dll and php.ini to your windows folder
3) edit php.ini to set file system paths and modules
4) tell IIS to load .php files using php4isapi.dll by clicking a few buttons in the IIS manager.

IIRC, that's all. There are installers you can download, or joel could have got one of his interns to write a one-click MSI package for it all.

From that, we can conclude that wasabi is not to avoid php on windows, but because they had a really experienced architecture astronaut type coder who joel had to keep entertained as he probably knew far too much about fogbugz to let him go work for someone else :-)

I am reasonably sure it took me half a day to install php on IIS6 under Windows 2003, and it was something to do with the directory where IIS was trying to look for PHP. I think I ended up putting php.exe in C:\Windows to get it working.

Ritchie: FogBugz already has a fancy installer that checks dependencies and versions and such.  In my hypothetical scenario, they would check for PHP, and install it for you if it didn't exist.