Compile PHP 8 on Ubuntu Server 20.04

Want to be on the bleeding edge, all the time? Me too! I prefer to compile PHP from source because I get to have a binary that is small and I get to have the latest version rather than waiting for the distro to release it

TOC

• Ubuntu Packages
• Add PHP8 To Your Path
• Download PHP 8
• Create A Build Script
• Compile PHP
• PHP INI File
• Download Composer
• Configure PHP-FPM
• PHP Built-In Server
• PHP-FPM nGinx
• PHP-FPM Lighttpd
• XDebug

Download the necessary packages

This is tailored for Laravel, Symfony, Drupal - some of the these packages probably won't be necessary but, why not just get everything, eh?

apt-get install build-essential pkg-config \
  libxml2-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev libzip-dev \
  libcurl4-openssl-dev libonig-dev libsodium-dev \
  libargon2-dev zip libgd-dev libicu-dev autoconf

Add PHP to path

Add PHP 8 to our path. Edit your .bashrc file and add

if [ -d "$HOME/bin/php8/bin" ] ; then
  PATH="$HOME/bin/php8/bin:$PATH"
fi

Download PHP 8

Let's grab the latest PHP 8 version

wget https://www.php.net/distributions/php-8.1.9.tar.gz -O php-8.1.9.tar.gz
tar xf php-8.1.9.tar.gz

Create A Build Script

cd php-8.1.8 and create the following file build_php.sh

#!/bin/sh

######################
# filename: build_php.sh
#
# STEP 1: sh build_php.sh
# STEP 2: make -j number_of_cores_or_processors_CPU_has
# STEP 3: make install
######################

INSTALL_DIR=$HOME/bin/php8

mkdir -p $INSTALL_DIR

./configure --prefix=$INSTALL_DIR \
  --enable-bcmath \
  --enable-fpm \
  --with-fpm-user=www-data \
  --with-fpm-group=www-data \
  --disable-cgi \
  --enable-mbstring \
  --enable-shmop \
  --enable-sockets \
  --enable-sysvmsg \
  --enable-sysvsem \
  --enable-sysvshm \
  --with-zlib \
  --with-curl \
  --without-pear \
  --with-openssl \
  --enable-pcntl \
  --with-password-argon2 \
  --with-sodium \
  --with-pear \
  --enable-intl \
  --with-external-gd

If working With MariaDB or Postgres add these lines

If you are using MariaDB or PostgreSQL (or both) you will need to add some lines to the compile script as well as install the databases

INSTALL DATABASES

First you have to install the databases

apt-get install mariadb-server
apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib libpq-dev

Then you need to add the following lines to the configure script

# if working with MariaDB
--with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd

# if working with Postgres
--with-pdo-pgsql

Compile PHP

Now that our build script it done (you should be in the php8.1.9 dir)

• sh build_php.sh
• make -j 2
• make install

Setup the INI file

Copy the file php.ini-development from the PHP 8.1.9 directory to our path

# run from the php-8.1.9 directory
cp php.ini-development ~/bin/php8/lib/php.ini

Make the following changes to the php.ini file

• set the timezone: date.timezone=America/Chicago (see https://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php)
• fix CGI: cgi.fix_pathinfo=1

Download composer

cd ~/bin
php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php composer-setup.php
ln -s composer.phar composer
unlink composer-setup.php

Configure PHP-FPM

Create PHP-FPM config file

cd ~/bin/php8/etc/; mv php-fpm.conf.default php-fpm.conf
cd ~/bin/php8/etc/php-fpm.d/; mv www.conf.default www.conf

Start PHP-FPM

You can start PHP-FPM service by running it

sudo ~/bin/php8/sbin/php-fpm

Webservers: nGinx, lighttpd, PHP -S

You have the option of serving your web app multiple ways. nGinx and lighttpd are 2 good options. both are lightweight and production ready. The 3rd option is running the PHP web-server php -S. This is a good option actually, but isn't production ready

PHP -S

This is definitely the simplest and doesn't even require PHP-FPM

cd /path/to/php/code
php -S localhost:8080 -t /path/to/index.php

nGinx

sudo apt-get install nginx

create a development config

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/
sudo touch devel

Now, set devel to point to our development directory

# filename: /etc/nginx/sites-available/devel
server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    # path to code (index.php should be in this directory)
    root /path/to/php-code;

    index index.php;

    server_name phpdevbox;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        # deny access to .htaccess files
        deny all;
    }
}

Enable our new devel site

cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
unlink default
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/devel

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service # reload nginx

lighttpd

This is a lightweight extremely fast webserver capable of serving 10,000 requests. With docker becoming more popular, Lighttpd makes more sense than nginx (which performs better) with multicores

sudo apt-get install lighttpd
sudo systemctl status lighttpd.service

Edit the file /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/15-fastcgi-php.conf

    fastcgi.server += (
        ".php" => ((
            "host" => "127.0.0.1",
            "port" => "9000",
            "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"
        ))
    )

Edit the file /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

# server.document-root = "/var/www/html"
server.document-root = "/path/to/php"

Enable Fast CGI

sudo lighttpd-enable-mod fastcgi
sudo lighttpd-enable-mod fastcgi-php

Enable rewrite to remove index.php from URL

sudo lighttpd-enable-mod rewrite

and edit the file /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf and add the line

 url.rewrite-if-not-file = ( "" => "/index.php${url.path}${qsa}" )

Now, restart lighttpd

sudo systemctl restart lighttpd.service

Enabling XDebug

The PECL repo seems to always have the latest version of XDEBUG available, so you no longer need to compile it and it install it manually.

pecl install xdebug

Open the ~/bin/php8/lib/php.ini file and add the lines

[xdebug]
zend_extension=xdebug
xdebug.mode=develop,debug
xdebug.client_host=IP.OF.YOUR.COMPUTER
xdebug.start_with_request=yes

The client host is the IP of your computer running VS Code or PHPStorm