FreeBSD:php

Okay using PHP with FreeBSD is not very intuitive or well documented as of writing this, so here are a few hints.

This will install the PHP 5 base system on your FreeBSD machine from the ports tree, and clean up everything when it's done.

# cd /usr/ports/lang/php5/ && make install distclean

often you will need a php extension installed. In order to help the various people who are stuck like I was, here is a list of possible extensions you may need/want:

               BCMATH          "bc style precision math functions" off \
               BZ2             "bzip2 library support" off \
               CALENDAR        "calendar conversion support" off \
               CTYPE           "ctype functions" on \
               CURL            "CURL support" off \
               DBA             "dba support" off \
               DBASE           "dBase library support" off \
               DOM             "DOM support" on \
               EXIF            "EXIF support" off \
               FILEINFO        "fileinfo support" off \
               FILEPRO         "filePro support" off \
               FRIBIDI         "FriBidi support" off \
               FTP             "FTP support" off \
               GD              "GD library support" off \
               GETTEXT         "gettext library support" off \
               GMP             "GNU MP support" off \
               HASH            "HASH Message Digest Framework" on \
               ICONV           "iconv support" on \
               IMAGICK         "ImageMagick support" off \
               IMAP            "IMAP support" off \
               INTERBASE       "Interbase 6 database support (Firebird)" off \
               LDAP            "OpenLDAP support" off \
               MBSTRING        "multibyte string support" off \
               MCRYPT          "Encryption support" off \
               MHASH           "Crypto-hashing support" off \
               MING            "ming shockwave flash support" off \
               MSSQL           "MS-SQL database support" off \
               MYSQL           "MySQL database support" off \
               MYSQLI          "MySQLi database support" off \
               NCURSES         "ncurses support (CLI only)" off \
               ODBC            "unixODBC support" off \
               OPENSSL         "OpenSSL support" off \
               PANDA           "panda support" off \
               PCNTL           "pcntl support (CLI only)" off \
               PCRE            "Perl Compatible Regular Expression support" on \
               PDF             "PDFlib support (implies GD)" off \
               PDO             "PHP Data Objects Interface (PDO)" on \
               PGSQL           "PostgreSQL database support" off \
               POSIX           "POSIX-like functions" on \
               PSPELL          "pspell support" off \
               READLINE        "readline support (CLI only)" off \
               RECODE          "recode support" off \
               SESSION         "session support" on \
               SHMOP           "shmop support" off \
               SIMPLEXML       "simplexml support" on \
               SNMP            "SNMP support" off \
               SOAP            "SOAP support" off \
               SOCKETS         "sockets support" off \
               SQLITE          "sqlite support" on \
               SYBASE_CT       "Sybase database support" off \
               SYSVMSG         "System V message support" off \
               SYSVSEM         "System V semaphore support" off \
               SYSVSHM         "System V shared memory support" off \
               TIDY            "TIDY support" off \
               TOKENIZER       "tokenizer support" on \
               WDDX            "WDDX support (implies XML)" off \
               XML             "XML support" on \
               XMLREADER       "XMLReader support" on \
               XMLRPC          "XMLRPC-EPI support" off \
               XMLWRITER       "XMLWriter support" on \
               XSL             "XSL support (Implies DOM)" off \
               YAZ             "YAZ support (ANSI/NISO Z39.50)" off \
               ZIP             "ZIP support" off \
               ZLIB            "ZLIB support" off

Initially my searches online led me to know I needed the session extension for php. As it wasn't intuitive to me, I manually added "--enable-session" to the Makefile in /usr/ports/lang/php5/. I was told this is the wrong approach, and it could affect me later. So there are two approaches from here. One way to find the two approaches:

# ( cd /usr/ports && make search key=pcre | grep Path: | grep php5 )
Path:   /usr/ports/devel/php5-pcre
Path:   /usr/ports/lang/php5-extensions
Path:   /usr/ports/www/horde-php5

so if I just want to install a single extension, it's probably found in /usr/ports/devel/php5-pcre or if I want to install several, I can install each individually, or go into the php extensions meta port

# cd /usr/ports/lang/php5-extensions && make config

will give me an ncurses based window to go through and pick the extensions I want. After that I can do

# make install distclean

as long as I'm still in the usr/ports/lang/php5-extensions directory.