Question

I have been compiling PHP for years with the configuration options I want. I compile extensions I use from source. Is there an advantage to doing this versus installing it from a package manager like apt-get or yum. I assumed it would also give me a leaner binary. I noticed that their are PHP modules in the repos such as “php53-gd”. What if there wasn’t a package available for something I wanted such as cURL for PHP?

I understand the disadvantages of compiling such as needing to download/install dependencies based on my configuration options. I’m not really concerned with that.

So the question is:

Compile PHP on Linux or just use apt-get / yum? Can I get all the things I need from the repos? Does anyone out there still compile it from source?

Any insight is appreciated! Thanks.

Answer 1

I compile from source every time. It’s not hard to corral the mentioned issues with regards to compiling manually. For example, my ./configure settings are saved to a file which is version controlled, so when a new version of PHP is stable and I am ready to make the switch, I download and extract the file, then run this command:

./configure `sh /path/to/my/configure/php.sh`

Not too difficult. And because it’s in version control, I can add notes as to why a module was added or removed.

Another benefit of manual compilation is it allows me to keep the PHP footprint as minimal as possible. I pass the --disable-all flag, then add the modules I need. However, there is a downside to this minimalist approach, recently I needed to install Magento, so I had to recompile with --enable-hash and --with-mcyrpt flags. Even though I needed to add new flags, it wasn’t difficult to add to the configure file and recompile.