PHP
PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.
Installation
You can find older versions of PHP in the AUR including php53AUR, php55AUR, php56AUR, php70AUR, php71AUR, php72AUR, php73AUR and php74AUR.
Running
While PHP can be run standalone, it is typically used with web servers. That requires installing additional packages and editing configuration files. For common setups, see the following:
To run PHP scripts as plain CGI, you need the php-cgi package.
Configuration
The main PHP configuration file is well-documented and located at .
- It is recommended to set your timezone (list of timezones) in like so:
date.timezone = Europe/Berlin
- If you want to display errors to debug your PHP code, change to in :
display_errors = On
- The open_basedir directive limits the paths that can be accessed by PHP, thus increasing security at the expense of potentially interfering with normal program execution. Starting with PHP 7.0, it is no longer set by default to more closely match upstream so users who wish to use it must configure it manually. All symbolic links are resolved, so it is not possible to avoid this restriction with a symlink. The default Arch packages for certain webapps like & installs the webapps under
/usr/share/webappsand creates a symlink pointing to the actual configuration files for those webapps under/etc/webapps. So, if you are setting up , make sure both those folders listed are in the . This will obviously be different for webapps installed in other locations. Example:
open_basedir = /srv/http/:/var/www/:/home/:/tmp/:/var/tmp/:/var/cache/:/usr/share/pear/:/usr/share/webapps/:/etc/webapps/
Extensions
A number of commonly used PHP extensions can also be found in the official repositories:
$ pacman -Ss php-
Existing extensions are located in directory.
For example, to enable extension create file with line:
extension=iconv
Extensions for current and older versions of PHP are also available in the AUR under prefixes like php- and php56-, e.g. php-imagick, , .
gd
For uncomment the line in :
extension=gd
Imagemagick
Install the package and install one of the listed PHP extension library.
Install php-imagick, it will create the file /etc/php/conf.d/imagick.ini to configure the extension.
If you want imagemagick to have SVG support, e.g. for nextcloud, then install } as a dependency.
PECL
Make sure the package has been installed:
# pecl install imagick
Create a /etc/php/conf.d/imagick.ini and enable the extension:
Multithreading
If you wish to have POSIX multi-threading you will need the parallel extension. To install the extension using you are required to use a compiled version of PHP with the the thread safety support flag . Currently the most clean way to do this would be to rebuild the original package with the flag. Instruction can be found on the PHP pthreads extension page.
PCNTL
PCNTL allows you to create process directly into the server side machine. While this may seen as something you would want, it also gives PHP the power to mess things up really badly. So it is a PHP extension that cannot be loaded like other more convenient extension. This is because of the great power it gives to PHP. To enable it PCNTL has to be compiled into PHP.
The php package on Arch Linux is currently built with "--enable-pcntl", so that it should be available by default.
MySQL/MariaDB
Install and configure MySQL/MariaDB as described in MariaDB.
Uncomment the following lines in :
extension=pdo_mysql extension=mysqli
You can add minor privileged MySQL users for your web scripts. You might also want to edit and add in mysqld section line so the MySQL server is only accessible by the localhost, as per MariaDB#Enable access locally only via Unix sockets. You have to restart MySQL for changes to take effect.
Redis
Install and configure Redis, then install .
Uncomment the line of the package, e.g. /etc/php/conf.d/redis.ini.
Also ensure that the igbinary extension is enabled (also uncommented) in /etc/php/conf.d/igbinary.ini
PostgreSQL
Install and configure PostgreSQL, then install the package and uncomment the following lines in :
extension=pdo_pgsql extension=pgsql
Sqlite
Install and configure SQLite, then install the package and uncomment the following lines in :
extension=pdo_sqlite extension=sqlite3
XDebug
XDebug allows you to easily debug (using modified var_dump function), profile, or trace PHP code.
Install and uncomment the following line in :
zend_extension=xdebug
You can configure what XDebug does by adding a xdebug.mode line to the same file. By default, it is set to .
IMAP
Install and uncomment the line at :
extension=imap
Snuffleupagus
Install , uncomment the two lines in , and put the path to the snuffleupagus.rules file in the second line:
extension=snuffleupagus.so sp.configuration_file=/etc/php/conf.d/snuffleupagus.rules
Caching
There are two kinds of caching in PHP: opcode/bytecode caching and userland/user data caching. Both allow for substantial gains in applications speed, and therefore should be enabled wherever possible.
- Zend OPCache provides only opcode caching.
- APCu provides only userland caching.
OPCache
OPCache comes bundled with the standard PHP distribution, therefore to enable it you simply have to add or uncomment the following line in your PHP configuration file:
/etc/php/php.ini
zend_extension=opcache
A list of its options and suggested settings can be found in its official entry on the PHP website.
APCu
APCu can be installed with the package. You can then enable it by uncommenting the following line in , or adding it to your PHP configuration file:
extension=apcu
Its author recommends a few suggested settings, among which:
- and are not really required as they represent the default values;
- on the other hand seems rather beneficial;
- finally, , which although not recommended by the manual may be required by some software such as ownCloud.
/etc/php/conf.d/apcu.ini or directly to your PHP configuration file. Just make sure not to enable the extension twice as it will result in errors being diplayed in the system logs.Commandline tools
Composer
Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. It can be installed with the package.
Allow user-wide installations
To allow global package installations for the current user (e.g. $ composer global require "package/name"), you may want to specify a default location by using an environment variable:
PATH="$HOME/.config/composer/vendor/bin:$PATH"
Box
Box is an application for building and managing Phars. It can be installed with the package.
PDepend
PHP Depend (pdepend) is software metrics tool for php. It can be installed with the package.
PHP Coding Standards Fixer
PHP Coding Standards Fixer is a PSR-1 and PSR-2 Coding Standards fixer for your code. It can be installed with the package.
PHP-CodeSniffer
PHP CodeSniffer tokenizes PHP, JavaScript and CSS files and detects violations of a defined set of coding standards. It can be installed with the package.
phpcov
phpcov is a command-line frontend for the PHP_CodeCoverage library. It can be installed with the phpcovAUR package.
phpDox
phpDox is the documentation generator for PHP projects. This includes, but is not limited to, API documentation. It can be installed with the package.
PHPLoc
PHPLoc is a tool for quickly measuring the size of a PHP project. It can be installed with the package.
PhpMetrics
PhpMetrics provides various metrics about PHP projects. It can be installed with the package.
phptok
phptok is a tool for quickly dumping the tokens of a PHP sourcecode file. It can be installed with the package.
PHPUnit
PHPUnit is a programmer-oriented testing framework for PHP. It can be installed with the phpunitAUR package.
PHPUnit Skeleton Generator
PHPUnit Skeleton Generator is a tool that can generate skeleton test classes from production code classes and vice versa. It can be installed with the package.
Producer
Producer is a command-line quality-assurance tool to validate, and then release, your PHP library package. It can be installed with the package.
Troubleshooting
PHP Fatal error: Class 'ZipArchive' not found
Ensure the zip extension is enabled.
/etc/php/php.ini not parsed
If your is not parsed, the ini file is named after the sapi it is using. For instance, if you are using uwsgi, the file would be called . If you are using cli, it is .
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: <module>: Unable to initialize module
When running php, this error indicates that the aforementioned module is out of date. This will rarely happen in Arch Linux, since maintainers make sure core PHP and all modules be only available in compatible versions.
This might happen in conjunction with a module compiled from the AUR. You usually could confirm this by looking at the dates of the files .
To fix, find a compatible update for your module, probably by looking up the AUR using its common name.
If it applies, flag the outdated AUR package as outdated.