During his MIX10 session in Las Vegas yesterday, Building PHP Applications using the Windows Azure Platform, Sumit Chawla, Technical PM/Architect, Microsoft Interoperability Strategy Team, announced the new Windows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP Community Technology Preview (CTP). As Sumit describes them in his blog post today, these tools enable developers to easily package and deploy PHP applications to Windows Azure using a simple command-line tool, without any Integrated Development Environment (IDE).  These tools also allow the creation of new applications or conversion of existing PHP applications to Windows Azure by creating the deployment package (.cspkg) and Configuration file (.cscfg) that can be used for both the local Development Fabric and Windows Azure Platform cloud.

To see the tools in action, watch Sumit and Craig Kitterman, Senior Technical Evangelist, Microsoft, demonstrate how to convert and deploy a simple PHP application to Windows Azure in the video, New Windows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP.

The tools are available under an open source BSD license and can be downloaded at: https://azurephptools.codeplex.com/