Installing php4

[Drew Marshall]

Matthew Seaman wrote:
<snipped>

>Actually, php4-extensions works with any of the 'main' PHP ports --
>lang/php4, lang/php4-cli, www/php4-cgi or www/mod_php4.  The fact that
>there are 4 different variations on a plain 'php4' port in the tree is
>the reason why all of the module support was moved out into a separate
>extensions port.  
>
>While this move to specifying all of the PHP modules as loadable
>extensions makes a great deal of sense from one point of view -- ports
>that use PHP can now explicitly list all of the extensions they
>require to operate, rather than having to have their own private PHP
>slave ports -- the implementation has run into a number of problems.
>
>For php4 there are some extensions where the same functionality is not
>available when used as a loadable module as when compiled in.  The
>security/php4-openssl extension is a case in point: unless OpenSSL
>support is compiled-in, the fsockopen() function won't let you open
>'tls://' or 'ssl://' style URLs.  (As a practical result, that means
>that eg. Squirrelmail can't communicate with a secure IMAP server on
>port 993.  The only alternative in that case is to communicate to an
>unencrypted IMAP server on port 143, which quite probably involves
>sending passwords over the net in plaintext.)
>
>Beyond that, not all of the PHP consuming ports have yet been updated
>to depend on the appropriate PHP extensions, so installing those ports
>de novo doesn't immediately get you a workable system.  A common
>symptom of this is a run-time error where one of the perl compatible
>regular expression (pcre_*()) functions doesn't work.  The answer
>pretty much is just to install the required extension modules by hand,
>and tweak the value of the 'extension_dir' directive in
>/usr/local/etc/php.ini
>
>  
>
I understand the logic but I would have thought a line somewhere in 
Makefile or the README just to give poor stupid people like me a clue as 
to where to start looking. Ons further question that has come from my 
compilation of the php4-extension is that once you have made your 
selection the first time these options seem to be saved somewhere (The 
build process states found previous configuration or similar) where is 
this? I missed an option in my hurry this morning and now can't get back 
to the menu options (No matter how many make cleans, pkg_deletes etc I 
do) to re-set or add the options.

Many thanks for being so helpful

Drew

-- 
In line with our policy, this message has 
been scanned for viruses and dangerous 
content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
www.themarshalls.co.uk/policy