List of core configure options

Below is a partial list of configure options used by the PHP configure scripts when compiling in Unix-like environments. Most configure options are listed in their appropriate locations on the extension reference pages and not here. For a complete up-to-date list of configure options, run ./configure --help in your PHP source directory after running autoconf (see also the Installation chapter). You may also be interested in reading the » GNU configure documentation for information on additional configure options such as --prefix=PREFIX.

Note:
These are only used at compile time. If you want to alter PHP's runtime configuration, please see the chapter on Runtime Configuration.

Configure Options in PHP

Misc options

--enable-debug: Compile with debugging symbols.
--with-layout=TYPE: Sets how installed files will be laid out. Type is one of PHP (default) or GNU.
--with-pear=DIR: Install PEAR in DIR (default PREFIX/lib/php).
--without-pear: Do not install PEAR.
--enable-sigchild: Enable PHP's own SIGCHLD handler.
--disable-rpath: Disable passing additional runtime library search paths.
--enable-libgcc: Enable explicitly linking against libgcc.
--enable-php-streams: Include experimental PHP streams. Do not use unless you are testing the code!
--with-zlib-dir[=DIR]: Define the location of zlib install directory.
--with-tsrm-pthreads: Use POSIX threads (default).
--enable-shared[=PKGS]: Build shared libraries [default=yes].
--enable-static[=PKGS]: Build static libraries [default=yes].
--enable-fast-install[=PKGS]: Optimize for fast installation [default=yes].
--with-gnu-ld: Assume the C compiler uses GNU ld [default=no].
--disable-libtool-lock: Avoid locking (might break parallel builds).
--with-pic: Try to use only PIC/non-PIC objects [default=use both].
--enable-versioning: Export only required symbols. See INSTALL for more information.

PHP options

--enable-maintainer-mode: Enable make rules and dependencies not useful (and sometimes confusing) to the casual installer.
--with-config-file-path=PATH: Sets the path in which to look for php.ini, defaults to PREFIX/lib.
--disable-short-tags: Disable the short-form <? start tag by default.
--with-libdir: Specifies the directory where the libraries to build PHP exist on a Unix system. For 64bit systems, its needed to specify this argument to the lib64 directory like: --with-libdir=lib64.
--enable-zts: Enables thread safety. Prior to PHP 8.0.0 on non-Windows systems, the option was called --enable-maintainer-zts.

SAPI options

The following list contains the available SAPI&s (Server Application Programming Interface) for PHP.

--with-apxs[=FILE]

Build shared Apache module. FILE is the optional pathname to the Apache apxs tool; defaults to apxs. Make sure you specify the version of apxs that is actually installed on your system and NOT the one that is in the apache source tarball.

--with-apache[=DIR]

Build a static Apache module. DIR is the top-level Apache build directory, defaults to /usr/local/apache.

--with-mod_charset

Enable transfer tables for mod_charset (Russian Apache).

--with-apxs2[=FILE]

Build shared Apache 2.0 module. FILE is the optional pathname to the Apache apxs tool; defaults to apxs.

--disable-cli

Disable building the CLI version of PHP (this forces --without-pear). More information is available in the section about Using PHP from the command line.

--enable-phpdbg

Enable phpdbg interactive debugger SAPI module support.

--enable-embed[=TYPE]

Enable building of the embedded SAPI library. TYPE is either shared or static, which defaults to shared.

--with-servlet[=DIR]

Include servlet support. DIR is the base install directory for the JSDK. This SAPI requires the java extension must be built as a shared dl.

--disable-cgi

Disable building CGI version of PHP.

This argument also enables FastCGI.