Experimental Add-on to use PHP patch versions: ddev-php-patch-build

Overview

DDEV users periodically ask if they can use a specific PHP patch version with their projects, either to test/compare for a particular bug or to match a production version exactly.

This experimental add-on tries to address that need, although there are a number of caveats:

1. The build done using this process uses the technique from static-php-cli and full details are available there. It builds PHP 8.1 and later, including PHP 8.6 pre-releases, see Pre-release versions. static-php-cli doesn't support PHP 7.x, and support for 8.0 and 8.1 is best-effort. The tests cover 8.1, 8.4, 8.5 and 8.6.
2. The build does not match the build done using the official DDEV php packages (which actually come from deb.sury.org.
3. It does not provide Xdebug, so ddev xdebug doesn't work. xhprof isn't built by default, and ddev xhprof hasn't been tested with it. See extension support.
4. The resultant PHP binaries built here do not have the exact same extensions as the official DDEV PHP binaries, see Extensions.
5. Building the binaries happens in the build phase of ddev start, and it takes a long time on the first ddev start or whenever you change versions. The build uses static-php-cli's pre-built libraries where they exist; with the default extensions it took about 9 minutes on an Apple Silicon Mac. Each extension you add makes it longer.
6. If you want to see the build process as it proceeds, you can use ddev utility rebuild or DDEV_VERBOSE=true ddev start.
7. When you use this add-on, your DDEV php_version setting doesn't choose the PHP binary, but DDEV's php.ini and php-fpm configuration still come from it. Set php_version to the same minor version you build, for example ddev config --php-version=8.5 for 8.5.12. See PHP configuration.
8. To see what's going on during the build, use ddev utility rebuild -s web --cache
9. Your mileage may vary.

• The static-php-cli repository provides a relatively easy way to build static PHP binaries (the CLI and php-fpm) which can be used to replace the ones installed in ddev-webserver.
• The provided .ddev/web-build/Dockerfile.php-patch-build does the building.

Installation

# Set your desired PHP version, when prompted, e.g., 8.4.10
ddev add-on get rfay/ddev-php-patch-build
ddev restart

After installation, make sure to commit the .ddev directory to version control.

PHP configuration

The static PHP binaries use DDEV's php.ini for the CLI and for php-fpm, so DDEV's settings such as memory_limit, upload limits and Mailpit's sendmail_path apply as usual.

Custom settings in .ddev/php/*.ini work as with the regular DDEV PHP. Don't put extension= lines in them: static PHP can't load shared extensions. Add the extension to STATIC_PHP_EXTENSIONS instead.

Run ddev php --ini to see which files are loaded.

Extensions

The default build includes the extensions most projects need, listed under STATIC_PHP_EXTENSIONS below.

These extensions in the regular DDEV PHP aren't built by default, but you can add them to STATIC_PHP_EXTENSIONS. Each one adds to the build time:

bz2, ffi, gettext, igbinary, imagick, ldap, memcached, msgpack, readline, redis, shmop, soap, sockets, sysvmsg, sysvsem, sysvshm, xhprof, xsl, yaml

Setting STATIC_PHP_EXTENSIONS replaces the default list, so start from the default and add to it. For example, to add redis and igbinary:

ddev dotenv set .ddev/.env.php-patch-build --static-php-extensions="apcu,bcmath,calendar,ctype,curl,dom,exif,fileinfo,filter,ftp,gd,iconv,intl,mbstring,mysqli,openssl,pcntl,pdo,pdo_mysql,pdo_pgsql,pdo_sqlite,phar,posix,session,simplexml,sodium,sqlite3,tokenizer,xml,xmlreader,xmlwriter,zip,redis,igbinary"
ddev restart

Run ddev php -m to check which extensions are built in. See static-php-cli's extension list for everything it can build.

These are not available:

• uploadprogress: not supported by static-php-cli. Applications such as Drupal still work, but don't show upload progress bars.
• xdebug: see the caveats above.
• xmlrpc: not supported by static-php-cli.

Pre-release versions

You can build the current release candidate of a PHP version that isn't released yet, such as 8.6.0RC4:

ddev config --php-version=8.6
ddev dotenv set .ddev/.env.php-patch-build --static-php-version=8.6.0RC4
ddev add-on get rfay/ddev-php-patch-build
ddev restart

Only the current pre-release listed on php.net can be downloaded, so update --static-php-version when a new one comes out.

For PHP 8.6, APCu is built from an unreleased commit because the latest APCu release doesn't support PHP 8.6. If your DDEV version doesn't support php_version: 8.6, use 8.5; it only affects which php.ini is used.

Advanced Customization

You can choose a different PHP version with:

ddev dotenv set .ddev/.env.php-patch-build --static-php-version=8.4.10
ddev add-on get rfay/ddev-php-patch-build
ddev restart

After installation, make sure to commit the .ddev directory to version control.

If you hit GitHub rate limits while downloading static-php-cli extensions, export your token before running ddev start to build the PHP binaries:

export DDEV_GITHUB_TOKEN=your_github_token

DDEV passes DDEV_GITHUB_TOKEN, GH_TOKEN, or GITHUB_TOKEN to the build as a secret, so the token isn't stored in the image. This requires DDEV newer than v1.25.4; older versions build without a token.

Variable	Flag	Default
STATIC_PHP_EXTENSIONS	--static-php-extensions	apcu,bcmath,calendar,ctype,curl,dom,exif,fileinfo,filter,ftp,gd,iconv,intl,mbstring,mysqli,openssl,pcntl,pdo,pdo_mysql,pdo_pgsql,pdo_sqlite,phar,posix,session,simplexml,sodium,sqlite3,tokenizer,xml,xmlreader,xmlwriter,zip (opcache is added for PHP 8 and later)
STATIC_PHP_VERSION	--static-php-version	required, (not set)

Credits

Contributed and maintained by @rfay