I have just installed PHP 5.3.8 from source for my Linux VPS. There are two folders, one labeled ‘ext’ and another labeled ‘extensions’. Inside of the ‘ext’ directory, I see the PHP extensions that I installed and under the ‘extensions’ directory, I see another directory labeled ‘ no-debug-non-zts-20090626’ that has the files libmysql.a mysql.so.
The directory structure looks like:
php-install-dir/include/php/ext
php-install-dir/lib/php/extensions
Do I need the ‘extensions’ folder for anything? I have WAMP installed on my local machine and the extensions folder is the opposite of that than when I install from source.
include/php/ext contains the C header files for the extensions, which are required when compiling and placed in the install tree (versus leaving them in the source tree) in the case that other extensions might need them in the future. You may not ever need these, but there’s no reason to delete them. lib/php/extensions contains the compiled code that actually does the work. You need it if you’re using any of the extensions.