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rkcperea
rkcperea

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Getting Started with PHP on Ubuntu 24.04

#learning #programming #php #laravel

I'll document how to install Laravel on Ubuntu 24.04, currently in progress.

I tried following Laravel documentation, but below didn't work for me:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://php.new/install/linux/8.4)"
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If you did, you might need to uninstall first with:

~/.config/herd-lite/bin/uninstall-herd-lite
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and remove the path changes in ~/.bashrc

I tried using mise, but there was also an error. 

mise use php
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something about Japanese characters and missing gdlib

Learning from git

Since we have a #learning tag, this is what I normally do

  • with this, we'll be aware of caveats, issues, trends, etc.

First, go to php-src

run the following commands

sudo apt install --dry-run pkg-config build-essential autoconf bison re2c libxml2-dev libsqlite3-dev
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I usually start with a --dry-run option, check the size by removing the --dry-run, finally continue or rerun with a -y . In my case, I'm only missing bison libxml2-dev re2c which is less than 10 MB. For brevity, I will proceed with just a -y

sudo apt install -y pkg-config build-essential autoconf bison re2c libxml2-dev libsqlite3-dev
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I prefer having the git source code so I can backtrace and learn from changelogs. Check the latest version, in my case php-8.4.10

git clone git@github.com:php/php-src.git
git checkout php-8.4.10
./buildconf
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It's nice how PHP instructs the next step

./buildconf --force
./configure --enable-debug
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They'll reply with Thank you for using PHP.

make -j$(nproc)
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the reply:
Build complete.
Don't forget to run 'make test'.

make -j$(nproc) test
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You may have found a problem in PHP.
This report can be saved and used to open an issue on the bug tracker at
https://github.com/php/php-src/issues
This gives us a better understanding of PHP's behavior.
Do you want to save this report in a file? [Yn]: Report saved to: /home/rkc/.php/php-src/php_test_results_20250723_2157.txt

So let's report a bug: https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/19227

It requires a php -v output

make install
sudo make install
php -v
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Finally, you'll see
PHP 8.4.10 (cli) (built: Jul 23 2025 14:34:18) (NTS DEBUG)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.4.10, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies

I'm a Rails developer who is new to dev.to, and to PHP. Exploring other languages.

I'll cut it short for now and go back to my rails project. Hopefully, I could edit this tomorrow.

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