Build your own PHP on Windows

This tutorial concerns building PHP with the new php-windows-builder tooling, it also uses the PHP SDK 2.0 under the hood, so can be used to build PHP 7.0 and above. To build PHP prior to 7.0, or if you experience issues building PHP lower than 7.2 with this, please refer to older documentation.

Building PHP on Windows will require three things.

1. A properly set up build environment, including the compiler, git and the PHP SDK
2. Prebuilt libraries and headers for third party libraries that PHP uses in the correct location
3. The PHP source

The advantage of using php-windows-builder tooling is that it can set up all of it under the hood.

PHP officially supports building with Microsoft's Visual C++ compilers. The following VC++ versions are supported and can be set up before you build, or it will be installed on the first run:

• Visual C++ 14.0 (Visual Studio 2015) for PHP 7.0 or PHP 7.1.
• Visual C++ 15.0 (Visual Studio 2017) for PHP 7.2, PHP 7.3 or PHP 7.4.
• Visual C++ 16.0 (Visual Studio 2019) for PHP 8.0, PHP 8.1, PHP 8.2 or PHP 8.3.
• Visual C++ 17.0 (Visual Studio 2022) for PHP 8.4.

Always keep your installed Visual C++ up to date. Otherwise build errors may occur due to dependencies built with newer versions.

Support for a certain Visual Studio version means only support for its default platform toolset; building PHP with a non-default platform toolset (such as 14.16 with Visual Studio 2019) may work, but is not recommended.

• Install the required Visual Studio Version as per the PHP Version as mentioned in the Requirements section.

• BuildPhp and BuildPhpExtension PowerShell modules.

• Optional tools
  • Git

To build PHP locally, you can install the BuildPhp powershell module from the PowerShell Gallery:

You'll need at least PowerShell version 5, which is available by default on Windows 10 and later. It is recommended to use PowerShell 7 or later. If you have an older version, you can install the latest version following these instructions.

All commands in the rest of this document should be run in an elevated PowerShell session (Run as Administrator).

• Install the BuildPhp PowerShell package:

  Install-Module -Name BuildPhp -Repository PSGallery -Force

• To install this module for the current user only:

  Install-Module -Name BuildPhp -Repository PSGallery -Force -Scope CurrentUser

• To build a specific version, use the Version input. It supports values in major.minor.patch format, e.g., 7.4.25, 8.0.12, etc., or master for the master branch of php-src.
• To build a 32-bit or a 64-bit version, use the Arch input. It supports values x64 and x86.
• To build a thread-safe or non-thread-safe version, use the Ts input. It supports values ts and nts.

• Run the build:

  Invoke-PhpBuild -Version 8.4.11 -Arch x64 -Ts nts

• It should produce the PGO optimized builds for the input PHP version and configuration in a directory named artifacts in the current directory.

To build the PHP extensions locally, you can install the BuildPhpExtension PowerShell module from the PowerShell Gallery:

• Install the BuildPhpExtension PowerShell package:

  Install-Module -Name BuildPhpExtension -Repository PSGallery -Force

• To install this module for the current user only:

  Install-Module -Name BuildPhpExtension -Repository PSGallery -Force -Scope CurrentUser

• To build a PHP extension, you can use the ExtensionUrl input. It supports a git repository URL as value.
• To build a specific version of the extension, you can use the ExtensionRef input. It supports a git reference, e.g., a tag or a branch as value.
• To build the extension for a specific PHP version, you can use the PhpVersion input. It supports values in major.minor format, e.g., 7.4, 8.0, etc.
• To build the extension for a 32-bit or a 64-bit PHP version, you can use the Arch input. It supports values x64 and x86.
• To build the extension for a thread-safe or non-thread-safe PHP version, you can use the Ts input. It supports values ts and nts.
• To specify the libraries required for the extension, you can use the Libraries input. It supports a comma-separated list of library names.
• To specify additional arguments to pass to the configure script, you can use the Args input. It supports a string value.

Invoke-PhpBuildExtension -ExtensionUrl https://github.com/xdebug/xdebug `
                         -ExtensionRef 3.4.5 `
                         -PhpVersion 8.4 `
                         -Arch x64 `
                         -Ts nts `
                         -Libraries "zlib" `
                         -Args "--with-xdebug"

• It should produce the extension builds in a directory named artifacts in the current directory.