PHP is a popular general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development. Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world. PHP is distributed under the PHP License v3.01.
The PHP manual is available at php.net/docs.
Prebuilt packages and binaries can be used to get up and running fast with PHP.
For Windows, the PHP binaries can be obtained from
windows.php.net. After extracting the archive the
*.exe files are ready to use.
For other systems, see the installation chapter.
For Windows, see Build your own PHP on Windows.
For a minimal PHP build from Git, you will need autoconf, bison, and re2c. For a default build, you will additionally need libxml2 and libsqlite3.
On Ubuntu, you can install these using:
sudo apt install -y pkg-config build-essential autoconf bison re2c libxml2-dev libsqlite3-dev
On Fedora, you can install these using:
sudo dnf install re2c bison autoconf make ccache libxml2-devel sqlite-devel
On MacOS, you can install these using brew:
brew install autoconf bison re2c libiconv libxml2 sqlite
or with MacPorts:
sudo port install autoconf bison re2c libiconv libxml2 sqlite3
Generate configure:
./buildconf
Configure your build. --enable-debug is recommended for development, see
./configure --help for a full list of options.
# For development
./configure --enable-debug
# For production
./configure
Build PHP. To speed up the build, specify the maximum number of jobs using the
-j argument:
make -j4
The number of jobs should usually match the number of available cores, which
can be determined using nproc.
PHP ships with an extensive test suite, the command make test is used after
successful compilation of the sources to run this test suite.
It is possible to run tests using multiple cores by setting -jN in
TEST_PHP_ARGS or TESTS:
make TEST_PHP_ARGS=-j4 test
Shall run make test with a maximum of 4 concurrent jobs: Generally the maximum
number of jobs should not exceed the number of cores available.
Use the TEST_PHP_ARGS or TESTS variable to test only specific directories:
make TESTS=tests/lang/ test
The qa.php.net site provides more detailed info about testing and quality assurance.
After a successful build (and test), PHP may be installed with:
make install
Depending on your permissions and prefix, make install may need superuser
permissions.
Extensions provide additional functionality on top of PHP. PHP consists of many essential bundled extensions. Additional extensions can be found in the PHP Extension Community Library - PECL.
The PHP source code is located in the Git repository at github.com/php/php-src. Contributions are most welcome by forking the repository and sending a pull request.
Discussions are done on GitHub, but depending on the topic can also be relayed to the official PHP developer mailing list internals@lists.php.net.
New features require an RFC and must be accepted by the developers. See Request for comments - RFC and Voting on PHP features for more information on the process.
Bug fixes don't require an RFC. If the bug has a GitHub issue, reference it in
the commit message using GH-NNNNNN. Use #NNNNNN for tickets in the old
bugs.php.net bug tracker.
Fix GH-7815: php_uname doesn't recognise latest Windows versions
Fix #55371: get_magic_quotes_gpc() throws deprecation warning
See Git workflow for details on how pull requests are merged.
See further documents in the repository for more information on how to contribute:
- Contributing to PHP
- PHP coding standards
- Internal documentation
- Mailing list rules
- PHP release process
For the list of people who've put work into PHP, please see the PHP credits page.