vfox-php

A vfox / mise plugin for managing PHP versions.

Features

• Dynamic version fetching: Automatically fetches available versions from PHP's GitHub repository
• Always up-to-date: No static version list to maintain
• Compiles from source: Uses official PHP source releases
• Automatic Composer: Installs Composer after PHP
• Cross-platform: Works on Linux and macOS

Requirements

macOS (Homebrew)

xcode-select --install
brew install autoconf bison re2c pkg-config \
    libxml2 openssl@3 icu4c zlib libzip oniguruma \
    freetype jpeg libpng webp gmp libsodium readline bzip2

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf bison re2c pkg-config \
    libxml2-dev libssl-dev libicu-dev libzip-dev libonig-dev \
    libcurl4-openssl-dev libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libfreetype6-dev \
    libwebp-dev libgmp-dev libsodium-dev libreadline-dev libbz2-dev

RHEL/CentOS/Fedora

sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo dnf install autoconf bison re2c pkgconfig \
    libxml2-devel openssl-devel libicu-devel libzip-devel oniguruma-devel \
    libcurl-devel libpng-devel libjpeg-devel freetype-devel \
    libwebp-devel gmp-devel libsodium-devel readline-devel bzip2-devel

Installation

With mise

mise install php@latest
mise install [email protected]
mise install [email protected]

With vfox

vfox add php
vfox install php@latest

Usage

# List all available versions
mise ls-remote php

# Install a specific version
mise install [email protected]

# Set global version
mise use -g [email protected]

# Set local version (creates .mise.toml)
mise use [email protected]

Environment Variables

This plugin sets the following environment variables:

• PATH - Adds the PHP bin and sbin directories
• LD_LIBRARY_PATH - Adds PHP lib directory (Linux only)

Configuration

Custom configure options

Add extra configure options:

PHP_EXTRA_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS="--with-pdo-sqlite" mise install [email protected]

Or override all configure options (prefix is always added):

PHP_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS="--with-openssl --enable-mbstring" mise install [email protected]

Included Extensions

The default build includes many common extensions:

• Database: mysqli, pdo_mysql, pdo_pgsql (if libpq available)
• String: mbstring, intl, gettext, iconv
• Compression: zlib, bz2, zip
• Crypto: openssl, sodium
• Graphics: gd (with freetype, jpeg, png, webp)
• Other: curl, bcmath, calendar, exif, fpm, pcntl, soap, sockets

How It Works

This plugin:

1. Fetches available versions from github.com/php/php-src tags
2. Downloads the source tarball for the requested version
3. Runs ./buildconf --force to generate configure script
4. Configures with platform-appropriate options
5. Compiles with make && make install
6. Installs Composer

Troubleshooting

Missing dependencies on macOS

If you see errors about missing libraries, install them via Homebrew:

brew install libxml2 openssl@3 icu4c

Configure fails with "Package not found"

Make sure pkg-config can find your libraries. The plugin sets PKG_CONFIG_PATH automatically for Homebrew packages, but you may need to install pkg-config:

brew install pkg-config

Build takes a long time

PHP compilation typically takes 5-15 minutes depending on your hardware. The plugin uses parallel compilation (make -j) to speed this up.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.