XAMPP is regularly updated to the latest releases of Apache, MariaDB, PHP and Perl. The Windows version of XAMPP requires Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable. XAMPP requires only one zip, tar, 7z, or exe file to be downloaded and run, and little or no configuration of the various components that make up the web server is required. While both letters P are de facto interchangeable, convention used at the Apache Friends website indicates that the first letter P is short for PHP and the latter letter P is short for Perl. MySQL was replaced with MariaDB on 19 October 2015 and beginning with XAMPP versions 5.5.30 and 5.6.14, effectively altering the meaning of the acronym. The term can be unofficially broken down as follows:Īn ideographic letter referring to cross-platform Īpache, or its expanded form, Apache HTTP Server Their homepage header reads 'XAMPP Apache + MariaDB + PHP + Perl', indicating that this abbreviation is a recursive acronym. However, there is no official acronym expansion specified on the Apache Friends website.