We are happy to announce that we have updated our BitNami PHP platforms Stacks (LAMP, MAMP, WAMP, LAPP, MAPP and WAPP) to include the recently released PHP 5.4 and Apache 2.4.1. You can download the stacks as native installers for Linux, OS X or Windows, and as virtual machines. You will also find ready to deploy Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).
Among the new features in Apache 2.4, you will find major improvements related to performance and memory consumption, as well as Dynamic Reverse Proxy configuration, improved Authentication/Authorization, FastCGI Proxy and a Small Object Caching API. This release puts Apache on par with alternative web servers like nginx for many common scenarios.
Some of the key new features of PHP 5.4 include: traits, a shortened array syntax, a built-in webserver for testing purposes, significant improvements in performance and memory footprint.
In addition to PHP and Apache, the following major components were updated:
phpMyAdmin 3.4.10.1
AWS SDK for PHP 1.5.1
Symfony 2.0.11
Because PHP 5.4 is still very new and not all apps support them, these PHP platform stacks do not support BitNami application modules at this point in time. The stacks are intended for quickly testing and experimenting with these new versions, so please do not run them in production unless you know exactly what you are getting into! If you have any questions or suggestions, we will be glad to help you in our Q&A forum.