Official announcement : Red Hat Software Collections 1.0 Beta Now Available

More information on Software Collections

Stability addicts can keep quiet, PHP 5.3.3 is still the standard version provided with RHEL-6.

We'll soon have an official and supported way to install PHP version 5.4, beside the system version, without any effect on installed components. The announcement tells us the life cycle will be 3 years.

Warning:  it's a beta version, published for evaluation purposes.

Installation

Activation of the distribution channel (requires a valid subscription) from the RHN web interface or from command line:

# rhn-channel --add --channel=rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta

Installation of the meta-package and default components:

# yum install php54
...
======================================================================================================================================================
 Package                            Arch                    Version                          Repository                                          Size
======================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 php54                              x86_64                  1-7.el6                          rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  3.3 k
Installing for dependencies:
 php54-php-cli                      x86_64                  5.4.14-3.el6                     rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  2.6 M
 php54-php-common                   x86_64                  5.4.14-3.el6                     rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  566 k
 php54-php-pear                     noarch                  1:1.9.4-7.el6                    rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  370 k
 php54-php-process                  x86_64                  5.4.14-3.el6                     rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                   45 k
 php54-php-xml                      x86_64                  5.4.14-3.el6                     rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  109 k
 php54-runtime                      x86_64                  1-7.el6                          rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  1.0 M

Transaction Summary
======================================================================================================================================================
Install       7 Package(s)

Total download size: 4.7 M
Installed size: 0 
Is this ok [y/N]: y

That's all ;)

Utilisation

Default version still 5.3.3

# php -v
PHP 5.3.3 (cli) (built: Nov 29 2012 04:12:23)
Copyright (c) 1997-2010 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies

You need to explicitly ask to use the SCL version, standard (SCL) way:

# scl enable php54 "php -v"
PHP 5.4.14 (cli) (built: May 23 2013 07:42:19)
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

You can also use (for this collection, not supported for others):

# /opt/rh/php54/root/usr/bin/php -v
PHP 5.4.14 (cli) (built: May 23 2013 07:42:19)
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

You can also permanently activate the collection:

# source /opt/rh/php54/enable
# php -v
PHP 5.4.14 (cli) (built: May 23 2013 07:42:19)
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

Use from Apache

Various ways exist (CGI, FastCGI,...) we'll only see the mod_php case

# yum install php54-php

Warning : apache can't load 2 php5 modules, so if the standard module is already present, on apache startup, you will get the error message:

[Sun Jun 16 16:51:01 2013] [warn] module php5_module is already loaded, skipping

You need to uninstall (or disable) the standard module, and then apache will use the PHP 5.4 from the collection.

PEAR extensions

See : PHP Extension and Application Repository

The collection has a dedicated pear installation tree (/opt/rh/php54/root/usr/share/pear), which means that pear extensions are not shared between system and collection.

# pear list
Installed packages, channel pear.php.net:
=========================================
Package          Version State
Archive_Tar      1.3.7   stable
Console_Getopt   1.2.3   stable
PEAR             1.9.4   stable
Structures_Graph 1.0.4   stable
XML_RPC          1.5.4   stable
XML_Util         1.2.1   stable
# scl enable php54 "pear list"
Installed packages, channel pear.php.net:
=========================================
Package          Version State
Archive_Tar      1.3.11  stable
Console_Getopt   1.3.1   stable
PEAR             1.9.4   stable
Structures_Graph 1.0.4   stable
XML_Util         1.2.1   stable

The pear command can be used to install more extensions in the collection.

PECL extensions

See : PECL extension repository

Currently available in the collection:

  • memcache extension: php54-php-pecl-memcache.
  • APC extension, provided for user data cache only (opcode cache is disabled as not considered stable for PHP 5.4): php54-php-pecl-apc and php54-apc-panel.

The pecl command can be used in the collection to manually install (build) more extensions. Those extensions will be available in the collection without altering the default system PHP.

Some experimental packages of commonly needed extensions are available in my personal testing repository. (interbase, mssql, mcrypt, apcu, igbinary, imagick, mongo, radius, sphinx, xhprof, xdebug, zendopcache...).

Conclusion

I think this is a very important new feature which should help the adoption of more recent PHP versions in enterprise environment.

RHEL clone users can also try the packages available on the community project site : Software Collections

Last updated: February 22, 2024

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