Google App Engine PHP SDK - How to install on Ubuntu (15.10)?

Question

Google official documentation is available here:
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/downloads#Google_App_Engine_SDK_for_PHP

But it doesn't provide sufficient information about the following step:
"4 - Build and install the PHP interpreter and App Engine PHP extension. Specify the path to php-cgi and gae_runtime_module.so when running the development server."

I'm using a new Virtualbox machine with Ubuntu 15.10 and PhpStorm to test GAE.

Could someone please provide clear instructions about step 4? What do I need to do to install the php interpreter and the App Engine php extension?

P.s. I've already searched with google but I only found old/confusing tutorials

Answer 1

That GAE PHP extension seems like a quite new thing. Don't remember using it on the SDK in Ubuntu 14.04.

You need to build PHP and that extension from source. You should grab the latest PHP5.5 branch from their source repo (http://php.net/git.php) and build it. That linked page contains instructions on building PHP but the procedure is similar to the following:

$ git clone <php-src> 
$ cd ./php-src/ 
$ git checkout PHP-5.5
$ ./buildconf
$ ./configure --prefix="/opt/php55"
$ sudo make && sudo make install

And remember to pick the modules and packages you want to compile with PHP5.5 to be used in the SDK. I think Google had an official list of modules and extensions they use inside GAE PHP and inside the SDK PHP. The prefix argument tells the compiler where to install the resulting application.

Then you need to get that source for the PHP extension and build it

$ git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/appengine-php-extension
$ cd appengine-php-extension
$ phpize # remember to use the phpize from the just built PHP5.5 binaries
$ ./configure
$ sudo make && sudo make install

(That Git repository contains detailed building instructions so you should probably refer to them when building.)

Enable the resulting .so for the PHP5.5 you just built using the PHP configuration files.

After that you need to install the PHP SDK and configure it to use the newly built PHP binary

$ dev_appserver.py <...> --php_executable_path=/opt/php55/bin/php-cgi

The SDK will let you know if the built PHP binaries are incompatible with the SDK version you use. I remember compiling the PHP from source around 5 times before it worked without any warnings.

But essentially they are telling you to compile PHP from source, then compile their extension from source and then use the built PHP+extension with the downloaded SDK. These instructions are from the top of my head so you may need to adjust the commands and procedures.

Answer 2

The process can be simplified by using Docker, here is an image you can use: https://hub.docker.com/r/mhariri/docker-google-appengine-php/

To run your app, you just need docker installed, and then run the following command in your app directory:

docker run -it -v $(pwd):/app --rm --net=host mhariri/docker-google-appengine-php