PHP 7.0 on CentOS/RHEL 6.9 and 7.4 via Yum

PHP 7.0.33 has been released on PHP.net on 6th December 2018, and is also available for CentOS/RHEL 6.9 and 7.4 at Webtatic via Yum.

Source - Issues

PEAR installer now supports PHP 7.0, however most pecl libraries will not support it as well without their maintainers adding compatibility, so only pecl libraries that do support it will be in the Webtatic repository.

Update 2016-12-17 - Webtatic now has released PHP 7.1.0 for CentOS/RHEL 6 and 7

PHP 7.0.0 comes with new version of the Zend Engine with features such as (incomplete list):

  • Improved performance: PHP 7 is up to twice as fast as PHP 5.6
  • Consistent 64-bit support
  • Many fatal errors are now Exceptions
  • Removal of old and unsupported SAPIs and extensions
  • The null coalescing operator (??)
  • Combined comparison Operator (<=>)
  • Return Type Declarations
  • Scalar Type Declarations
  • Anonymous Classes

To see what else has been added, check out the Migrating from PHP 5.6.x to PHP 7.0.x.

To install, first you must add the Webtatic EL yum repository information corresponding to your CentOS/RHEL version to yum:

CentOS/RHEL 7.x:

yum install epel-release
rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

CentOS/RHEL 6.x:

yum install epel-release
rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el6/latest.rpm

Now you can install PHP 7.0’s mod_php SAPI (along with an opcode cache) by doing:

yum install php70w php70w-opcache

You can alternatively install PHP 7.0’s php-fpm SAPI (along with an opcode cache by doing:

yum install php70w-fpm php70w-opcache

See the package list below for additional SAPIs and PHP extensions.

This will install the mod_php SAPI for PHP, however there are other sapis such as php-fpm (via php70w-fpm package). Read on below for more information about the available SAPIs

If you would like to upgrade php to this version it is recommended that you first check that your system will support the upgrade, e.g. making sure any CPanel-like software can run after the upgrade.

Unless you know what you are doing, it is risky upgrading an existing system. It’s much safer to do this by provisioning a separate server to perform the upgrade as a fresh install instead.

If you know what you are doing, you can upgrade PHP by:

yum install yum-plugin-replace
yum replace php-common --replace-with=php70w-common

It will likely give you a message “WARNING: Unable to resolve all providers …“. This is normal, and you can continue by tying “y”. You will be given a chance to see what packages will be installed and removed before again being given a chance to confirm.

SAPIs

SAPIs are different runtime environments of PHP.

  • mod_php NTS

(non-thread safety) Contained in the php70w package, this SAPI integrates into Apache Httpd (2.2.* on RHEL/CentOS 6, 2.4.* on RHEL/CentOS 7). It is the standard SAPI for use with httpd prefork mpm (the default mode httpd is ran under. It is not thread-safe, but doesn’t need to be due to prefork not using threads. It’s located at /usr/lib[64]/httpd/modules/libphp7.so

  • cli

Contained in the php70w-cli package, this SAPI allows running scripts from the command-line, and also has a built-in web server for development-use. Located at /usr/bin/php

  • fpm

Contained in the php70w-fpm package, fpm (FastCGI Process Manager) is a scalable FastCGI process, which acts similar to how Httpd prefork mpm works managing it’s forks. Located at /usr/sbin/php-fpm, it is controlled using the /etc/init.d/php-fpm service script

  • phpdbg

Contained in the php70w-phpdbg package, phpdbg has the ability to debug scripts using breakpoints from the command-line, and also supports remote-debugging using an external Java client for remote communication.

  • embedded

Contained in the php70w-embedded package, this SAPI allows embedding PHP in other applications. It’s library is located at /usr/lib[64]/libphp7.so

  • cgi, fastcgi

Contained in the php70w-cli package, these SAPIs are not recommended for use, but are available where needed. They both exist in the binary at /usr/bin/php-cgi.

  • mod_php TS

(thread safety) Contained in the php70w package, this SAPI integrates into Apache Httpd (2.2.* on RHEL/CentOS 6, 2.4.* on RHEL/CentOS 7). It is the standard SAPI for use with httpd worker mpm. It’s supposed to be thread-safe, but can’t guarantee to be, and certainly not under additional PHP extensions. It’s better to use FastCGI SAPIs than this one. It’s located at /usr/lib[64]/httpd/modules/libphp7-zts.so

Packages

Package Provides
php70w mod_php, php70w-zts
php70w-bcmath
php70w-cli php-cgi, php-pcntl, php-readline
php70w-common php-api, php-bz2, php-calendar, php-ctype, php-curl, php-date, php-exif, php-fileinfo, php-filter, php-ftp, php-gettext, php-gmp, php-hash, php-iconv, php-json, php-libxml, php-openssl, php-pcre, php-pecl-Fileinfo, php-pecl-phar, php-pecl-zip, php-reflection, php-session, php-shmop, php-simplexml, php-sockets, php-spl, php-tokenizer, php-zend-abi, php-zip, php-zlib
php70w-dba
php70w-devel
php70w-embedded php-embedded-devel
php70w-enchant
php70w-fpm
php70w-gd
php70w-imap
php70w-interbase php_database, php-firebird
php70w-intl
php70w-ldap
php70w-mbstring
php70w-mcrypt
php70w-mysql php-mysqli, php_database
php70w-mysqlnd php-mysqli, php_database
php70w-odbc php-pdo_odbc, php_database
php70w-opcache php70w-pecl-zendopcache
php70w-pdo php70w-pdo_sqlite, php70w-sqlite3
php70w-pdo_dblib php70w-mssql
php70w-pear
php70w-pecl-apcu
php70w-pecl-imagick
php70w-pecl-memcached
php70w-pecl-mongodb
php70w-pecl-redis
php70w-pecl-xdebug
php70w-pgsql php-pdo_pgsql, php_database
php70w-phpdbg
php70w-process php-posix, php-sysvmsg, php-sysvsem, php-sysvshm
php70w-pspell
php70w-recode
php70w-snmp
php70w-soap
php70w-tidy
php70w-xml php-dom, php-domxml, php-wddx, php-xsl
php70w-xmlrpc

Opcode Caches

The PHP distribution now comes with an opcode cache. This is the Zend Optimizer+ opcode cache, now known as the Zend OPcache extension. This extension is optional, so does not preclude you from using an alternate one.

Due to it being included in the PHP source distribution, it will be well maintained and more suitable for use while other Opcode cache’s are being updated over the coming months.

yum install php70w-opcache

error_reporting E_ALL includes E_STRICT

As mentioned in the PHP 5.4 guide:

You may get a lot more errors coming out of your error logs if by default your error_reporting is set to E_ALL now without explicitly turning off E_STRICT. The default php.ini that comes with the PHP package turns this off by default, but if you are upgrading from an existing installation, your php.ini may not be updated, meaning this will likely be turned on.