Reference Guide

Zend Server Reference Manual
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:
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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 nonsource
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.