Install PHP 7 For CentOS 6.7 CentOS 7.1

PHP 7 (7.0.0RC2) on CentOS/RHEL 6.7 and 7.1 via Yum

PHP 7.0.0RC2 has been released on PHP.net on 4th September 2015, and is also available for CentOS/RHEL 6.7 and 7.1 at Webtatic via Yum in it’s testing repository.

These packages are not suitable for production use until they have been updated to the official release.

Currently, PEAR does not support PHP 7.0.0, and Pyrus doesn’t support some pecl extensions, so will have to wait for one of these to become compatible.

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

For more information on the new features and other changes, you can read the NEWS file, or the UPGRADING file for a complete list of upgrading notes.

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

CentOS/RHEL 7.x:

rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

CentOS/RHEL 6.x:

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

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

yum install --enablerepo=webtatic-testing php70w php70w-opcache

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 --enablerepo=webtatic-testing 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 – different runtime environments of PHP

mod_php NTS

(non-thread safety) Contained in the php56w 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_dblib	php70w-mssql
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.