In June of 2013, PHP 5.5.0 was released as suitable for production use.  Our internal site used Apache httpd and MediaWiki to test PHP 5.5.0.  Our OS was CentOS 6.4 (64-bit).

We compiled PHP 5.5.0 from scratch, with all the prerequisite packages downloaded and installed, using the following configuration:

#! /bin/sh
#
# Created by configure

'./configure' \
'--enable-intl' \
'--enable-cgi' \
'--with-apxs2=/opt/apache/bin/apxs' \
'--with-pear' \
'--with-libdir=lib64' \
'--with-curl=shared' \
'--with-openssl=shared' \
'--prefix=/opt/php5' \
'--with-gdbm=shared' \
'--enable-dba=shared' \
'--with-db4=shared' \
'--enable-ftp' \
'--with-gd=shared' \
'--with-imap=shared' \
'--with-kerberos=/usr' \
'--with-imap-ssl=shared' \
'--enable-sockets' \
'--enable-zip' \
'--with-jpeg-dir=/usr' \
'--with-png-dir=/usr' \
'--with-xpm-dir=/usr' \
'--with-zlib' \
'--with-zlib-dir=/usr' \
'--with-bz2=shared' \
'--enable-exif' \
'--enable-soap' \
'--with-gmp' \
'--with-mcrypt=/usr/local' \
'--with-mhash' \
'--enable-mbstring' \
'--with-mysql=mysqlnd' \
'--with-mysqli=mysqlnd' \
'--with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd' \
'--with-snmp=shared' \
'--enable-wddx' \
'--enable-pcntl' \
'--with-xmlrpc=shared' \
'--with-xsl=shared' \
'--with-ldap=shared' \
'--with-ldap-sasl' \
'--with-libedit' \
'--with-readline' \
'--with-pgsql=/usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_config' \
'--with-pdo-pgsql=/usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_config' \
"$@"

The configuration above assumed the following:

• Apache httpd was installed in /opt/apache.
• MySQL and PostgreSQL were present and installed under /usr/local.
• Apache APR and APR-Util were installed in /opt/apr.

Other packages which were required by PHP were installed from either the official CentOS yum repository or from each package’s respective official source.

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The above configure script was saved as config-php.sh and placed above the PHP source directory.  The following commands were issued to start compiling and testing PHP:

cd php-5.5.0
../config-php.sh
make
make test

After the PHP tests were completed, the results were installed in /opt/php5:

sudo make install

In our setup, we used mod_fcgid to execute PHP scripts. See the previous article on installing PHP 5.4 for more information.

To verify that PHP is configured correctly, create a PHP script that contains the following:

<?php

phpinfo();

?>

The above script should generate something similar to this:

As you scroll down, you’ll see more information about the features of your particular PHP installation.

Remember to edit /opt/php/lib/php.ini to set certain variables properly. Here’s a sample php.ini file:

; Choose your preferred time zone and set it here
date.timezone = UTC

; Load extensions (see /opt/php5/lib/php/extensions)
; that you need.
extension = bz2.so
extension = curl.so
extension = dba.so
extension = gd.so
extension = imap.so
extension = ldap.so
extension = openssl.so
extension = snmp.so
extension = xmlrpc.so
extension = xsl.so

You should see information about these extensions in the phpinfo() output.