Compiling shared PECL extensions with phpize

Sometimes, using the pear installer is not an option. This could be because you're behind a firewall, or it could be because the extension you want to install is not available as a PEAR compatible package, such as unreleased extensions from CVS. If you need to build such an extension, you can use the lower-level build tools to perform the build manually.

The phpize command is used to prepare the build environment for a PHP extension. In the following sample, the sources for an extension are in a directory named extname:

$ cd extname
$ phpize
$ ./configure
$ make
# make install

A successful install will have created extname.so and put it into the PHP extensions directory. You'll need to and adjust php.ini and add an extension=extname.so line before you can use the extension.