Changes made to Windows support

Changes to the Windows releases:

• The minimum Windows
  version is now Windows XP SP3; Windows 98, ME, 2000 and NT4 are no
  longer supported.
• Windows binaries now
  target i586 and later. i386 and i486 are not supported.
• There is now
  experimental support for x64 versions of PHP on
  Windows.
• There is now compiler
  support for Visual C++ 9 (VC9), using Visual Studio 2008. Snapshots
  and releases will now also be available for VC9. Old binaries using
  VC6 are still supported and released in the line with
  VC9.
• The PDO_OCI
  php_pdo_oci8.dll library (for use with Oracle version 8
  client libraries) is no longer being built. Instead, use
  php_pdo_oci.dll (note no ‘8’) with Oracle 10 or 11 client
  libraries. Connection to other database versions is still
  supported.
• For the OCI8 extension, a new library
  php_oci8_11g.dll is available in addition to
  php_oci8.dll. Only one can be enabled at any time. Use
  php_oci8.dll with Oracle 10.2 client libraries. Use
  php_oci8_11g.dll with Oracle 11 or later client libraries.
  Connection to other database versions is still
  supported.

Windows support has been added for the following
functions:

• checkdnsrr()
• dns_get_record()
• fnmatch()
• getmxrr()
• getopt()
• imagecolorclosesthwb()
• inet_ntop()
• inet_pton()
• link()
• linkinfo()
• mcrypt_create_iv()
• readlink()
• socket_create_pair() – This function was
  previously available on Windows, but was disabled as of PHP 4.3.0
  due to a bug.
• stream_socket_pair()
• symlink()
• time_nanosleep()
• time_sleep_until()

Other changes:

• Improved portability of
  the stat(), touch(),
  filemtime(), filesize()
  functions, and other related functions (100% portable for the
  available data).
• It is now possible to
  create hard links on Windows using the link() function, and symbolic links using the
  symlink() function. Hard links are available
  as of Windows 2000, and symbolic links as of Windows
  Vista.
• The Windows version of
  PHP now exposes a set of constants prefixed PHP_WINDOWS_*.
  A list of these constants and their usage can be found at Predefined
  Constants.

Note: A new
dedicated site for PHP on Windows is now available, including
downloads, release candidates, and snapshots in various flavors
(thread-safe/not-thread-safe, VC6/VC9, x86/x64). The URL of this
site is » https://windows.php.net/.