How do I install PHP 7 (PHP next generation) on Ubuntu

Question

How do I install PHP 7 (PHP next generation) on Ubuntu?

I wanted to install PHP 7 on a clean install of Ubuntu to see what issues I would face.

Here’s the official (yet meager guide):

https://wiki.php.net/phpng

Answer 1

I did a run through on my own, and thought it would be useful to document what problems I ran into as I went and how I overcame them thus saving others perhaps some pain and suffering.

I did however (after the fact) find this http://jcutrer.com/howto/linux/how-to-compile-php7-on-ubuntu-14-04 which is a much cleaner guide than what I provide below.

From the guide (https://wiki.php.net/phpng):

./buildconf 
mkdir  ~/tmp 
cd ~/tmp
git clone https://git.php.net/repository/php-src.git
cd php-src

So far so good. At this point I started having problems:

./buildconf

Reported that I did not have make installed. The solution was found here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/192645/make-command-not-found

I tried this, but still had problems so I did this:

sudo apt-get purge make  
sudo apt-get install make 

Next problem when I tried ./buildconf again it complained that I did not have autoconfig. Here’s the solution to that:

sudo apt-get install autoconf  

Now finally got to run ./configure command and got this:

configure: WARNING: You will need re2c 0.13.4 or later if you want to regenerate PHP parsers. configure: error: bison is required to build PHP/Zend when building a GIT checkout!

Installing Bison also appears to install re2c as well so this fixes both problems:

sudo apt-get install bison    

Config churned along for quite some time and then puked with:

configure: error: xml2-config not found. Please check your libxml2 installation.

Should be an easy fix right? Just run:

sudo apt-get install libxml2

Nope. Not that easy. We already have the latest and greatest for this:

libxml2 is already the newest version.

Okay. Maybe we can solve this like we did make and purge and reinstall:

sudo apt-get purge libxml2 sudo apt-get install libxml2

Nope. Running ./configure barfs on the same error. SO to the rescue:

How to fix error with xml2-config not found when installing PHP from sources?

Aparently we need the development version of this library:

sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev

./configure again and we have progress...a new error:

configure: error: Cannot find OpenSSL's

Learning from our last foray let’s try:

sudo apt-get install openssl-dev

or

sudo apt-get install open-ssl-dev

Nope, Okay let’s do a search for this:

apt-cache search openssl 

Wow, that’s quite a few packages. Let’s narrow it down a bit:

apt-cache search openssl | grep php

Well that gives us a smaller list, but all have php5 in the front and we are doing a php7 (phpng Next Generation build from scratch); will any of these packages work? Off to the interwebs for our solution:

https://serverfault.com/questions/415458/php-error-cannot-find-openssls-evp-h

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev pkg-config

Let’s see if that made ./configure happy (nope, but progress...a new error):

configure: error: Please reinstall the BZip2 distribution

Searching the web again leads us to:

http://zgadzaj.com/how-to-install-php-53-and-52-together-on-ubuntu-1204

which tells us to do this:

sudo apt-get install libbz2-dev

Once again we send a prayer to the ./configure god and...

If configure fails try --with-vpx-dir= configure: error: jpeglib.h not found.

TO THE INTERWEBS!!!

Found this: http://www.omniweb.com/wordpress/?p=1040

sudo apt-get install libjpeg-dev 

Try ./configure again and SURVEY SAYS:

configure: error: png.h not found.

From the same website as above it says to do this:

sudo apt-get install libpng-dev

Try ./configure AGAIN and SURVEY SAYS:

configure error xpm.h not found

I took a stab in the dark and hit the target with:

sudo apt-get install libxpm-dev

Once again praying to the ./configure god and the reply is:

configure: error: freetype-config not found.

The ALL KNOWING Google directs us to the SO god here:

Configure php 5.3 fail with error : freetype.h not found (but libfreetype6-dev is installed)

sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev 

By now you have probably recognized the pattern of:

1. run ./configure

2. Search the error message on your favorite search engine or directly on SO.

3. Install the missing component via apt-get.

4. GOTO 1.

So from here on I am just going to show the error and the apt-get command or other commands that resolve the issue:

configure: error: Unable to locate gmp.h

build php5.3.8 on ubuntu , get error: configure: error: Unable to locate gmp.h

sudo apt-get install libgmp-dev  
sudo apt-get install libgmp3-dev
ln -s /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/gmp.h /usr/include/gmp.h

configure: error: mcrypt.h not found. Please reinstall libmcrypt.

sudo apt-get install libmcrypt-dev

configure: error: Please reinstall the mysql distribution

http://www.spiration.co.uk/post/1332/install%20PDO_MYSQL%20-%20mysql_config%20and%20header%20files%20problem

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev  

configure: error: Cannot find pspell

sudo apt-get install libpspell-dev

configure: error: Can not find recode.h anywhere under /usr / usr/local /usr /opt.

sudo apt-get install librecode-dev

configure: WARNING: unrecognized options: --with-t1lib

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=658248

No solution. Appears to be a regression bug. Workaround is to remove the --with-t1lib from the configuration options. I think this may apply to Windows builds only, but I’m not certain.

configure: WARNING: unrecognized options: --with-my-sql

No solution. Work around is to remove the --with-mysql switch from the configuration options. Since we are including the pdo-mysql this is probably not an issue anyway.

FINALLY We get to actually build PHP7 with this command (I suggest you make yourself a cup of coffee now as this takes some time) :

make

Use the command sudo make install to actually install our php build:

sudo make install 

To check if all is well and we have the right version execute this in the terminal:

cd $HOME/tmp/usr/bin
./php -v

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