DDEV users periodically ask if they can use a specific PHP patch version with their projects, either to test/compare for a particular bug or to match a production version exactly.

This experimental add-on tries to address that need, although there are a number of caveats:

1. The build done using this process uses the technique from static-php-cli and full details are available there. It supports all the versions supported in the upstream repository, currently PHP 7.3-8.5.
2. The build does not match the build done using the official DDEV php packages (which actually come from deb.sury.org.
3. It currently does not provide xdebug, see extension support.
4. The resultant PHP binaries built here do not have the exact same extensions as the official DDEV PHP binaries.
5. Building the binaries happens in the build phase of ddev start, and it takes a long time on the first ddev start or whenever you change versions. My tests on Gitpod, with a great internet connection, took about 8-9 minutes. It can be really annoying, and a better way to build would be an improvement.
6. If you want to see the build process as it proceeds, you can use ddev utility rebuild or DDEV_VERBOSE=true ddev start.
7. When you use this add-on, your DDEV php_version setting is ignored.
8. To see what's going on during the build, use ddev utility rebuild -s web --cache
9. Your mileage may vary.

• The static-php-cli repository provides a relatively easy way to build static PHP binaries (the CLI and php-fpm) which can be used to replace the ones installed in ddev-webserver.
• The provided .ddev/web-build/Dockerfile.php-patch-build does the building.

# Set your desired PHP version, when prompted, e.g., 8.0.10
ddev add-on get rfay/ddev-php-patch-build
ddev restart

After installation, make sure to commit the .ddev directory to version control.

You can choose a different PHP version with:

ddev dotenv set .ddev/.env.php-patch-build --static-php-version=8.0.10
ddev add-on get rfay/ddev-php-patch-build
ddev restart

After installation, make sure to commit the .ddev directory to version control.

If you hit GitHub rate limits while downloading static-php-cli extensions, export your token before running ddev start to build the PHP binaries:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=your_github_token

Contributed and maintained by @rfay