Beginners guide to package installation

Does anyone know of one?

[suidas]

Hi. I'm a long-time semi-amateur PHP programmer. I do some large and complex stuff in PHP and PERL, but I've never done any package installations. I managed to install MediaWiki once, but it was a chore and a half, and no "learning" took place.

Now I want to install PHP/YAZ and I'm stuck. Google "PHP packages instal" or etc. and you get lots of pages, but they're all geared to the "wrong level."

Does anyone know of a good "idiot's guide" to installing packages?

[henry0]

Of course you looked here:
[php.net...]

if you are installing on a wins machine do you have the corresponding MS package?

If you install on a *nix machine
for ex: RedHat the install should be easy through any of the provided package instalor

BTW you will have an easy task if you use an RPM package - no compilation -