I just updated my box from Slackware 8.0 to 8.1. I noticed a fewimportant updates recently like Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. I would like to install those and am pretty good at compiling, etc - but it appears the Apache compilation/configuration can be a bear. Just how hard is it to update Apache, etc and still maintain functionality? I mean in all the compile instructions I see all these things like "make sure and include support for...", "conifg with...", but there appears to be no definitive answer to what you need to do.

Check the packaged versions available on the slackware-current tree. The packages there are compiled and ready to install using pkgtool. Don't forget to look in the extras directory, as well. Most popular packages that users want to use are there. If not provided then you will probably need to build from source.

The version in slacware-current is 1.3.26 which is cool, but I thought I might live a little dangerously and try and install Apache 2.x. I ended up throwing caution to the wind and compiling from source with the following options:

./configure --disable-static --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs --enable-discard-path --with-config-file-path=/etc/apache --enable-safe-mode --with-openssl --enable-bcmath --with-bz2 --enable-pic --enable-calendar --enable-ctype --with-gdbm --with-db2 --with-db3 --with-imap-ssl=/tmp/pine4.44/imap/c-client --with-imap=/tmp/pine4.44/imap/c-client --enable-dbase --enable-ftp --enable-gd-imgstrttf --with-gd=/tmp/gd-1.8.4 --with-jpeg-dir=/tmp/gd-1.8.4 --with-png-dir=/tmp/gd-1.8.4 --with-gmp --with-mysql=/usr --with-xml=shared --with-mm=/usr --enable-trans-sid --enable-shmop --enable-sockets --with-regex=php --enable-sysvsem --enable-sysvshm --enable-yp --enable-memory-limit --with-tsrm-pthreads --enable-shared --disable-debug --with-zlib=/usr --enable-dav --enable-dav-fs --enable-vhost-alias

I picked those config option up by running a phpinfo() type page and checking my current (pre-install 1.3.24 Apache) settings. Hope they are ok - compile and install seems to have gone fine....we'll see....