Install PHP 7.0 (phpng) on Mac OS X

This guide will show how to install PHP 7.0 on on Mac OS X. This version of PHP is also known as PHPNG to indicate it is the “next generation” of PHP. Many fundamental improvements have been made – for example WordPress sites should see a 100% performance increase switching from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.0.

Install Brew

To start you will need to install Brew so that we can use it to install additional dependencies. Open Terminal and at the prompt enter the following.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Install Dependencies

Once Brew is installed, install the dependencies we’ll need using the following command. Make sure you have tapped homebrew/versions to access all dependencies (it won’t hurt to run it again if you’ve think you’ve tapped it, but aren’t sure).

brew tap homebrew/versions
brew install \
    autoconf \
    automake \
    bison27 \
    freetype \
    gd \
    gettext \
    git \
    mariadb \
    mcrypt \
    t1lib \
    zlib

Build PHPNG From Source

Now we need to clone the PHP-7.0.0 branch of the PHP source and compile it using the built in scripts.

git clone -b PHP-7.0.0 https://github.com/php/php-src.git
cd php-src
./buildconf --force
env YACC=`brew --prefix bison27`/bin/bison ./configure \
    --prefix="/usr/local/opt/phpng" \
    --with-config-file-path="/usr/local/etc/phpng" \
    --enable-bcmath \
    --enable-calendar \
    --enable-exif \
    --enable-ftp \
    --enable-gd-native-ttf \
    --enable-gd-jis-conv \
    --enable-mbstring \
    --enable-pcntl \
    --enable-sysvmsg \
    --enable-sysvsem \
    --enable-sysvshm \
    --enable-wddx \
    --enable-zip \
    --with-bz2 \
    --with-curl \
    --with-iconv \
    --with-freetype-dir=`brew --prefix freetype` \
    --with-gd \
    --with-gettext=`brew --prefix gettext` \
    --with-gmp \
    --with-jpeg-dir=`brew --prefix gd` \
    --with-mcrypt=`brew --prefix mcrypt` \
    --with-mysqli=`brew --prefix`/bin/mysql_config \
    --with-openssl \
    --with-pdo-mysql=`brew --prefix mariadb` \
    --with-png-dir=`brew --prefix gd` \
    --with-zlib=`brew --prefix zlib`
make -j`sysctl -n hw.logicalcpu_max`

Create Package Installer

Now create the package installer and complete the installation via the GUI.

env INSTALL_ROOT=$PWD/phpng-pkg make install
pkgbuild \
    --root phpng-pkg \
    --identifier net.php.phpng \
    --version 7.0.0-dev \
    --ownership recommended \
    phpng-dev.pkg
open phpng-dev.pkg

Use PHPNG

By default OS X will use the PHP binary located at /usr/bin/php, which as of this writing is PHP 5.5. To have PHPNG take precedence, will need to symlink to the /usr/local/bin directory. Run php -v to make sure you have the correct version, and if it’s not what you expected try which php to see the location that is being selected based on your $PATH.

ln -s /usr/local/opt/phpng/bin/php /usr/local/bin
php -v

PHP 7.0.0beta2 (cli) (built: Aug  3 2015 13:22:21) 
Copyright (c) 1997-2015 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0-dev, Copyright (c) 1998-2015 Zend Technologies