UNIX: Compiling PHP Extensions

This procedure describes how to compile a PHP extension. Zend Server includes over 77 extensions however there still may be a PHP extension that you want to compile by yourself.

Requirements:

PHP Tools:

PECL (PHP Extension Community Library): PECL is a repository for PHP extensions, providing a directory of all known extensions and hosting facilities for download and development of PHP extensions. - It is also a tool supplied in the form of a small shell script with PHP code behind it to retrieve extensions from the aforementioned repository.
phpize: a shell script to generate a configure script for PHP extensions

Build Tools:
While PHP can be built using many different tool chains, this article will focus on using the GNU tool chain. The main tools where PHP is concerned are:

autoconf: automatic configure script builder. This is called by the phpize script.
automake: a tool for generating GNU Standards-compliant Makefiles
libtool: Generic library support script. Libtool hides the complexity of generating special library types (such as shared libraries) behind a consistent (sort of :) ) interface.
GNU make: a GNU tool for controlling the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program's source files
GCC: PHP extensions are typically written in C. Hence, in order for them to compile, you would need a C compiler. While GCC now stands for GNU compiler Collection and is no longer just a GNU C Compiler, for our purposes we only need the C part of the collection. GNU's elf-binutils package: The programs in this package are used to assemble, link and manipulate binary and object files.

Install the following packages:

Users of distributions with package managers (mainly Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS and Fedora Core and many others) should install the following packages from their distribution's repository: gcc, make, autoconf, automake and libtool. Some of these tools depend on each other, for instance the libtool package depends on the gcc package, but no damage can be done from specifying all of them.

Note:

Users who utilize distributions that do not have package managers (Linux from scratch anyone?), can compile these tools themselves or obtain pre-compiled binaries for them quite easily.

Additionally, you can compile a PHP extension from the main PHP source (as opposed to PECL). This requires installing a package from the Zend Server repository called php-5.2-source-zend-server or php-5.3-source-zend-server, depending on your Zend Server's major PHP version. This package includes full PHP sources as patched, for security or optimization concerns, by the Zend development team. This ensures that you are using the exact same source code we used when building Zend Server.

Scenario 1: compile a PECL extension called Newt

Newt is a PHP extension for RedHat's Newt (New Terminal) library, a terminal-based window and widget library for writing applications with user friendly interfaces.

Being what it is, this extension requires the existence of the Newt library development files. If you are using Debian or Ubuntu you should install a package called libnewt-dev. On RedHat based distributions the package name is newt-devel. Make sure these are installed before continuing.

NOTE: Other extensions will have other dependencies. For example, the Mcrypt extension will require the Mcrypt development package.

NOTE: Since PECL will attempt to write the extension onto /usr/local/zend/lib/php_extensions, you will have to become a super user to perform this procedure. This is only needed for the actual make install.

To compile your own extension:

Assuming you have the Newt development package installed, run:
# /usr/local/zend/bin/pecl install newt

The truncated output of this command, along with explanations:

PECL retrieves the package from the repository...*/ downloading newt-1.2.1.tgz

Starting to download newt-1.2.1.tgz (24,853 bytes)

.........done: 24,853 bytes

5 source files, building

/*The phpize script is executed...*/

running: phpize

Configuring for:

PHP Api Version: 20041225

Zend Module Api No: 20060613

Zend Extension Api No: 220060519

building in /var/tmp/pear-build-root/newt-1.2.1

Configure comes into play

running: /tmp/pear/download/newt-1.2.1/configure

checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /bin/grep checking for egrep... /bin/grep -E checking for a sed that does not truncate output... /bin/sed checking for gcc... gcc checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out checking whether the C compiler works... yes checking whether we are cross compiling... no checking for suffix of executables...

checking for suffix of object files... o

Next comes libtool.

creating libtool

appending configuration tag "CXX" to libtool

configure: creating ./config.status

config.status: creating config.h

The actual compilation process: calls make which internally triggers GCC and LD.

running: make

/bin/sh /var/tmp/pear-build-root/newt-1.2.1/libtool --mode=compile gcc -I. -I/tmp/pear/download/newt-1.2.1 -DPHP_ATOM_INC -I/var/tmp/pear-build-root/newt-1.2.1/include

-I/var/tmp/pear-build-root/newt-1.2.1/main