Compiling shared PECL extensions with phpize

Sometimes, using the pecl installer is not an option. This could be because there is a firewall or because the extension being installed is unavailable as a PECL-compatible package, such as unreleased extensions from git. If such an extension needs to be built, the lower-level build tools can be used to perform the build manually.

The phpize command is used to prepare the build environment for a PHP extension. In the following sample, the sources for an extension are in a directory named extname:

$ cd extname
$ phpize
$ ./configure
$ make
# make install

A successful install will have created extname.so and put it into the PHP extensions directory. The php.ini will need to be adjusted, and an extension=extname.so line will need to be added before the extension can be used.

If the system is missing the phpize command, and precompiled packages (like RPM's) are used, be sure to install also the appropriate development version of the PHP package as they often include the phpize command along with the proper header files to build PHP and its extensions.

Execute phpize --help to display additional usage information.

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User Contributed Notes 5 notes

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67
Brian
16 years ago
If you have multiple PHP versions installed, you may be able to specify for which installation you'd like to build by using the --with-php-config option during configuration.

--with-php-config=[Insert path to proper php-config here]

For example (my case):
./configure --with-php-config=/usr/local/php5/bin/php-config5
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admin at eexit dot net
12 years ago
When compiling an extension for a stack which is 64 bits (for example) and your compiler is configured to compile in 32 bits, you can manually compile your extensions using C flags before your configure.

Example: my system compiler is 32 bits and my stack is 64 bits. To compile my xdebug:

# phpize
# CFLAGS=-m64 CPPFLAGS=-m64 CCASFLAGS=-m64 ./configure --enable-xdebug
# gmake
# file modules/xdebug.so
modules/xdebug.so:      ELF 64-bit LSB dynamic lib AMD64 Version 1, dynamically linked, not stripped, no debugging information available
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Glen
17 years ago
When you have multiple installations of PHP, running phpize from a specific installation will not force the module to be compiled with that installation's include files.

In my case, I had a standard PHP distribution installed, and am evaluating Zend Core / Zend Platform, which installed it's own Apache & PHP in a /usr/local/Zend/.. install path.  It was missing the json.so module, so I had to compile my own.

Running Zend Core's phpize, the output indicates that configuration for that module will occur.  But when running ./configure, the standard installation's include files are used.  The result json.so being compiled against the wrong PHP would not load when Zend Core's php initializes.

The only way I could see to correct the situation was to temporarily change the standard PHP include path to point to the Zend Core's include files.  In my case, I made a backup copy of /usr/include/php5 and did a "ln -s /usr/local/Zend/Core/include/php/ /usr/include/php5".
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gautama dot himawan at yahoo dot com
10 years ago
If you failed to run phpize command, then you should install php-devel package. Command line to install the php-devel package using yum is: yum install php-devel.

If you failed to compile the PECL extension, then you should install gcc package. Command line to install the gcc package using yum is: yum install gcc.
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dmytton at php dot net
18 years ago
In some situations (e.g. on a cPanel server), the built extension will not be placed into the correct extensions directory by the make install process. Use your phpinfo() output to determine what the correct extension_dir path is and move the generated .so file into that directory. The extension=extname.so line in php.ini will then find the extension file correctly.
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