the framework, I prefer to use svn and grab the tag, in this case: http://framework.zend.com/svn/framework/standard/tags/release-1.9.0/ The structure I chose was: /usr/local/zend/shared/ZendFrameworkSource/<version> I then created a symbolic link to the version I want and put that in my include_path. Example: /usr/local/zend/shared/ZendFrameworkLibrary/ -> /usr/local/zend/shared/ZendFrameworkSource/1.9.0/library/ Now with each upgrade, I only update the symbolic link