Building micro SAPI

Using static-php-cli (Recommended)

Due to the nature of micro SAPI, it's best to use static compilation to build the PHP runtime and related extensions. We recommend using static-php-cli to build a static PHP binary with micro SAPI included.

You can follow the steps in the static-php.dev documentation to build your own static PHP binary with micro SAPI. The general steps are as follows:

Install SPC Tool

Linux/macOS:

# 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

# Add execute permission
chmod +x ./spc

Windows:

curl.exe -fsSL -o spc.exe https://dl.static-php.dev/static-php-cli/spc-bin/nightly/spc-windows-x64.exe

Create Craft Configuration File

Create a craft.yml file specifying the list of extensions you want to include. For supported extensions, see the Extension List or Command Generator.

# PHP version support: 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
php-version: 8.4
# Put your extension list here
extensions: "bcmath,phar,openssl,mbstring"
sapi: 
  - cli
  - micro
download-options:
  prefer-pre-built: true

Build Static PHP Binary

Run the following command to build a static PHP binary with micro SAPI:

./spc craft

After the build is complete, you can find the generated micro.sfx file in the buildroot/bin/ directory. Copy it to wherever you want to use it, and you can start using micro SAPI to run your PHP applications.

Finally, you can use spc's micro:combine command to concatenate micro.sfx with your PHP code or PHAR file to create a self-executable binary:

echo '<?php echo "Hello, Micro SAPI!\n";' > app.php
./spc micro:combine app.php -O myapp
./myapp

Of course, without any other configuration, you can also manually complete this process using bash and powershell:

# Linux/macOS
cat buildroot/bin/micro.sfx app.php > myapp
chmod +x ./myapp
./myapp

# Windows
COPY /b buildroot\bin\micro.sfx + app.php myapp.exe
.\myapp.exe

For more build options and details, please refer to the static-php.dev documentation.

Other Build Methods

Besides using static-php-cli, you can also choose to manually compile micro SAPI from PHP source code. Please refer to PHP's official compilation guide for more details.

Manually compiling micro SAPI is generally only recommended when debugging micro SAPI itself. In most cases, it's recommended to use static-php-cli to build statically linked micro SAPI binaries.

Below are the general steps for manually compiling a micro.sfx with a minimal extension set. Specific details may vary depending on your system environment.

Prepare PHP Source Code

git clone https://github.com/php/php-src.git
cd php-src
git clone https://github.com/static-php/phpmicro.git sapi/micro

Configure and Compile

./buildconf --force
./configure --enable-micro --disable-all --enable-cli --with-openssl --with-zlib --enable-phar --enable-mbstring --enable-bcmath
make -j$(nproc)
# The generated micro.sfx is located at sapi/micro/micro.sfx