Compile PHP 7 on Mac OS X 10.11 "El Capitain"

Apple has made a numerous changes to the way OS X (10.11) "El Capitain" uses open source elements like PHP and OpenSSL. Compiling PHP from source requires a bit more modifications.

This article is a follow-up on my previous post Installing PHP 7 with XDebug, Apache and MySQL on OS X Yosemite

OpenSSL

Get the latest OpenSSL from openssl.org and unpack it so you can work with the sources.

Then just execute:

./Configure shared darwin64-x86_64-cc
make depend
make
sudo make install

PHP 7

Download the latest PHP 7 source code from php.net/download and unpack it in a temporarily directory, I like to use /tmp.

My configure command arguments:

./configure \
--prefix=/opt/php7 \
--enable-cli \
--enable-mbstring \
--enable-gd-native-ttf \
--enable-gd-jis-conv \
--enable-sockets \
--enable-exif \
--enable-ftp \
--enable-intl \
--enable-soap \
--enable-zip \
--with-apxs2 \
--with-iconv=/usr \
--with-config-file-path=/etc/php7 \
--with-config-file-scan-dir=/etc/php7/ext \
--with-libxml-dir=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.11.sdk/usr/ \
--with-openssl=/usr/local/ssl \
--with-curl \
--with-gd \
--with-libedit \
--with-mcrypt=/usr/local/bin \
--with-mysqli \
--with-zlib \
--with-pdo-mysql \
--with-mysql-sock=/tmp/mysql.sock

This gives me most of the modules and extensions I require for doing my PHP work. For concrete situations I prefer to use virtual machines or Docker containers to mimic the production environment as much as possible, but for small work it's easy to have it running natively on my local machine.

WARNING: Compile OpenSSL instead of using the build-in SSL as it's not compatible!

Edit PHP's Makefile and find the line that begins with EXTRA_LIBS. In this line, replace the following references -lcrypto with /usr/local/ssl/lib/libcrypto.dylib and -lssl with /usr/local/ssl/lib/libssl.dylibor where you have installed the latest OpenSSL library.

A convenient way is to use vi and use :s/\-lcrypto/\usr\/local\/ssl\/lib\/libcrypto.dylib/g to immediately replace all instances of -lcrypto in the line. Do the same for -lssl as well.

Once done, just execute make, make test and sudo make install to install the latest PHP 7 version on your MacBook.

You might want to replace the build-in php with your new compiled version of PHP.

cd /usr/bin
sudo mv php php-orig
sudo ln -sf /opt/php7/bin/php php

When you execute php -v you should see something like the following:

PHP 7.0.8 (cli) (built: Jul 19 2016 11:36:18) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies
    with Xdebug v2.4.0RC2, Copyright (c) 2002-2015, by Derick Rethans

Apache

It's nice to have PHP on command line, but you might want to have it run in your apache configuration as well.

If you look at the output of "make install" you will see the line:

[activating module `php7' in /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf]

This means PHP has modified your apache configuration and included the php7 module, you only need to activate it.

In /etc/apache/httpd.conf find the following line:

LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

And comment it out, as we're no longer use php 5, like this:

#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Locate the line:

#LoadModule php7_module        libexec/apache2/libphp7.so

And remove the comment hash (#) in front of it

LoadModule php7_module        libexec/apache2/libphp7.so

Restart apache with sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl restart

Now put the following file (info.php) in your document root (see /etc/apache/httpd.conf where this is)

>?php phpinfo();

And point your browser to that file on your local machine, in my case it is http://localhost/info.php.

PHP 7.0.8 running on "El Capitain"

You're now ready to unleash the PHP7 power! Have fun and let me know in the comments if it worked out for you. If not, let's work together how we can solve the issue.