如何构建一个在许多PHP版本中运行的PHP扩展？

Question

I have created a PHP extension using C++. I want to ship my extension to my clients in its binary form. That means I need to build a separate version of it for each PHP version (5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5) and each processor architecture.

My questions are:

1. why do they keep updating the API timestamp while the API itself seemingly does not change? Wouldn't it remove a lot of headache while upgrading your system to use the next version of PHP? Just for comparison, I also have a version of my extension for MS Excel using the XLL API and that API has remained backwards compatible since 2003 which allows me to have just two binaries (32 and 64 bit) for all of my clients.

2. Is there any way around this problem? I.e. is there a way to build a PHP extension that can be run in multiple PHP versions?

Answer 1

Maybe you can try a hybrid approach. Compile your C++ library separately and then create an open source PHP extension wrapper for that. The PHP extension has nearly no logic of its own. It converts data types from PHP to C/C++ back and forth and passes the arguments to functions/methods implemented in your C++ library.

You then just maintain a binary version of your library per platform and the adoption to a particular PHP version is done by the open source PHP extension.

This of course requires that the systems of your customers do have the PHP development packages installed, as well as a compiler.