static-php-cli

static-php-cli is a powerful tool designed for building static, standalone PHP runtime with popular extensions.

Static PHP built by static-php-cli supports cli, fpm, embed and micro SAPI.

static-php-cli also has the ability to package PHP projects along with the PHP interpreter into one single executable file.

Features

static-php-cli (you can call it spc) has a lot of features:

• 👜 Build single-file php executable, without any dependencies
• 🍔 Build phpmicro self-extracted executable (glue php binary and php source code into one file)
• 💊 Automatic build environment checker (Doctor module)
• ⚡ Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, Windows support
• 🔧 Configurable source code patches
• 📚 Build dependency management
• 📦 Provide spc own standalone executable (built by spc and box)
• 🔥 Support many popular extensions
• 💾 UPX integration (significantly reduces binary size)

Single-file standalone php-cli:

Combine PHP code with PHP interpreter using phpmicro:

Documentation

The current README contains basic usage. For all the features of static-php-cli, see https://static-php.dev .

Direct Download

If you don't want to build or want to test first, you can download example pre-compiled artifact from Actions, or from self-hosted server.

Below are several precompiled static-php binaries with different extension combinations, which can be downloaded directly according to your needs.

Combination	Extension Count	OS	Comment
common	30+	Linux, macOS	The binary size is about 7.5MB
bulk	50+	Linux, macOS	The binary size is about 25MB
minimal	5	Linux, macOS	The binary size is about 3MB
spc-min	5	Windows	The binary size is about 3MB
spc-max	40+	Windows	The binary size is about 8.5MB

Linux and Windows supports UPX compression for binaries, which can reduce the size of the binary by 30% to 50%. macOS does not support UPX compression, so the size of the pre-built binaries for mac is larger.

Build

Compilation Requirements

You can say I made a PHP builder written in PHP, pretty funny. But static-php-cli runtime only requires an environment above PHP 8.1 and extensions mentioned below.

• PHP >= 8.1 (This is the version required by spc itself, not the build version)
• Extension: mbstring,tokenizer,phar
• Supported OS with curl and git installed

Here is the supported OS and arch, where represents support for GitHub Action builds, 💻 represents support for local manual builds, and blank represents not currently supported.

	x86_64	aarch64
macOS	💻	💻
Linux	💻	💻
Windows	💻
FreeBSD	💻	💻

Currently supported PHP versions for compilation:

⚠️ supported but not maintained by static-php-cli authors

✔️ supported

❌ not supported

PHP Version	Status	Comment
7.2	❌
7.3	❌	phpmicro and some extensions not supported on 7.x
7.4	❌	phpmicro and some extensions not supported on 7.x
8.0	⚠️	PHP official has stopped maintenance of 8.0, we no longer provide backport support for version 8.0
8.1	✔️	PHP official has security fixes only
8.2	✔️
8.3	✔️
8.4	✔️

This table shows the support status for static-php-cli in building the corresponding version, not the official PHP support status for that version.

Supported Extensions

Please first select the extension you want to compile based on the extension list below.

• Supported Extension List
• Command Generator

If an extension you need is missing, you can submit an issue.

Here is the current planned roadmap for extension support: #152 .

Build Online (using GitHub Actions)

Use GitHub Action to easily build a statically compiled PHP, and at the same time define the extensions to be compiled by yourself.

1. Fork me.
2. Go to the Actions of the project and select CI.
3. Select Run workflow, fill in the PHP version you want to compile, the target type, and the list of extensions. (extensions comma separated, e.g. bcmath,curl,mbstring)
4. After waiting for about a period of time, enter the corresponding task and get Artifacts.

If you enable debug, all logs will be output at build time, including compiled logs, for troubleshooting.

Build Locally (using SPC binary, recommended)

This project provides a binary file of static-php-cli: spc. You can use spc binary instead of installing any runtime like golang app. Currently, the platforms supported by spc binary are Linux and macOS.

Download from self-hosted nightly builds using commands below:

# Download from self-hosted nightly builds (sync with main branch)
# For Linux x86_64
curl -fsSL -o spc https://dl.static-php.dev/static-php-cli/spc-bin/nightly/spc-linux-x86_64
# For Linux aarch64
curl -fsSL -o spc https://dl.static-php.dev/static-php-cli/spc-bin/nightly/spc-linux-aarch64
# macOS x86_64 (Intel)
curl -fsSL -o spc https://dl.static-php.dev/static-php-cli/spc-bin/nightly/spc-macos-x86_64
# macOS aarch64 (Apple)
curl -fsSL -o spc https://dl.static-php.dev/static-php-cli/spc-bin/nightly/spc-macos-aarch64
# Windows (x86_64, win10 build 17063 or later)
curl.exe -fsSL -o spc.exe https://dl.static-php.dev/static-php-cli/spc-bin/nightly/spc-windows-x64.exe

# Add execute perm (Linux and macOS only)
chmod +x ./spc

# Run (Linux and macOS)
./spc --version
# Run (Windows powershell)
.\spc.exe --version

Self-hosted spc is built by GitHub Actions, you can also download from Actions artifacts here.

Build Locally (using git source)

If you need to modify the static-php-cli source code, or have problems using the spc binary build, you can download static-php-cli using the git source code.

# just clone me!
git clone https://github.com/crazywhalecc/static-php-cli.git

If you have not installed php on your system, we recommend that you use the built-in setup-runtime to install PHP and Composer automatically.

cd static-php-cli
chmod +x bin/setup-runtime
# it will download static php (from self-hosted server) and composer (from getcomposer)
bin/setup-runtime
# initialize composer deps
bin/composer install
# chmod
chmod +x bin/spc
bin/spc --version

Start Building PHP

Basic usage for building php with some extensions:

If you are using the packaged standalone spc binary, you need to replace bin/spc with ./spc or .\spc.exe in the following commands.

# Check system tool dependencies, auto-fix them if possible
./bin/spc doctor --auto-fix

# fetch all libraries
./bin/spc download --all
# only fetch necessary sources by needed extensions (recommended)
./bin/spc download --for-extensions="openssl,pcntl,mbstring,pdo_sqlite"
# download pre-built libraries first (save time for compiling dependencies)
./bin/spc download --for-extensions="openssl,curl,mbstring,mbregex" --prefer-pre-built
# download different PHP version (--with-php=x.y or --with-php=x.y.z, recommend 8.1 ~ 8.3)
./bin/spc download --for-extensions="openssl,curl,mbstring" --with-php=8.1

# with bcmath,openssl,tokenizer,sqlite3,pdo_sqlite,ftp,curl extension, build both CLI and phpmicro SAPI
./bin/spc build "bcmath,openssl,tokenizer,sqlite3,pdo_sqlite,ftp,curl" --build-cli --build-micro
# build thread-safe (ZTS) version (--enable-zts)
./bin/spc build "curl,phar" --enable-zts --build-cli
# build, pack executable with UPX (linux and windows only) (reduce binary size for 30~50%)
./bin/spc build "curl,phar" --enable-zts --build-cli --with-upx-pack

Now we support cli, micro, fpm and embed SAPI. You can use one or more of the following parameters to specify the compiled SAPI:

• --build-cli: build static cli executable
• --build-micro: build static phpmicro self-extracted executable
• --build-fpm: build static fpm binary
• --build-embed: build embed (libphp)
• --build-all: build all

If anything goes wrong, use --debug option to display full terminal output:

./bin/spc build "openssl,pcntl,mbstring" --debug --build-all
./bin/spc download --all --debug

Different SAPI Usage

Use cli

php-cli is a single static binary, you can use it like normal php installed on your system.

When using the parameter --build-cli or --build-all, the final compilation result will output a binary file named ./php, which can be distributed and used directly. This file will be located in the directory buildroot/bin/, copy it out for use.

cd buildroot/bin/
./php -v                # check version
./php -m                # check extensions
./php your_code.php     # run your php code
./php your_project.phar # run your phar (project archive)

Use micro

phpmicro is a SelF-extracted eXecutable SAPI module, provided by phpmicro project. But this project is using a fork of phpmicro, because we need to add some features to it. It can put php runtime and your source code together.

When using the parameter --build-all or --build-micro, the final compilation result will output a file named ./micro.sfx, which needs to be used with your PHP source code like code.php. This file will be located in the path buildroot/bin/micro.sfx, simply copy it out for use.

Prepare your project source code, which can be a single PHP file or a Phar file, for use.

echo "<?php echo 'Hello world' . PHP_EOL;" > code.php
cat micro.sfx code.php > single-app && chmod +x single-app
./single-app

If you package a PHAR file, just replace code.php with the phar file path. You can use box-project/box to package your CLI project as Phar, It is then combined with phpmicro to produce a standalone executable binary.

# Use the micro.sfx generated by static-php-cli to combine,
bin/spc micro:combine my-app.phar
# or you can directly use the cat command to combine them.
cat buildroot/bin/micro.sfx my-app.phar > my-app && chmod +x my-app

# Use micro:combine combination to inject INI options into the binary.
bin/spc micro:combine my-app.phar -I "memory_limit=4G" -I "disable_functions=system" --output my-app-2

In some cases, PHAR files may not run in a micro environment. Overall, micro is not production ready.

Use fpm

When using the parameter --build-all or --build-fpm, the final compilation result will output a file named ./php-fpm, This file will be located in the path buildroot/bin/, simply copy it out for use.

In common Linux distributions and macOS systems, the package manager will automatically generate a default fpm configuration file after installing php-fpm. Because php-fpm must specify a configuration file before running, the php-fpm compiled by this project will not have any configuration files, so you need to write php-fpm.conf and pool.conf configuration files yourself.

Specifying php-fpm.conf can use the command parameter -y, for example: ./php-fpm -y php-fpm.conf.

Use embed

When using the project parameters --build-embed or --build-all, the final compilation result will output a libphp.a, php-config and a series of header files, stored in buildroot/. You can introduce them in your other projects.

If you know embed SAPI, you should know how to use it. You may require the introduction of other libraries during compilation, you can use buildroot/bin/php-config to obtain the compile-time configuration.

For an advanced example of how to use this feature, take a look at how to use it to build a static version of FrankenPHP.

Contribution

If the extension you need is missing, you can create an issue. If you are familiar with this project, you are also welcome to initiate a pull request.

If you want to contribute documentation, please just edit in docs/.

Now there is a static-php organization, which is used to store the repo related to the project.

Sponsor this project

You can sponsor me or my project from GitHub Sponsor. A portion of your donation will be used to maintain the static-php.dev server.

Open-Source License

This project itself is based on MIT License, some newly added extensions and dependencies may originate from the the other projects, and the headers of these code files will also be given additional instructions LICENSE and AUTHOR.

These are similar projects:

• dixyes/lwmbs
• swoole/swoole-cli

The project uses some code from dixyes/lwmbs, such as windows static build target and libiconv support. lwmbs is licensed under the Mulan PSL 2.

Due to the special nature of this project, many other open source projects such as curl and protobuf will be used during the project compilation process, and they all have their own open source licenses.

Please use the bin/spc dump-license command to export the open source licenses used in the project after compilation, and comply with the corresponding project's LICENSE.