[RFC] PHP should be compiled with ZTS or not ?

[drupol]

Hi,

I'm opening this RFC hoping to gather comments from the Apache and PHP maintainers.

We know that there are two ways to compile the PHP interpreter (yeah there are many others but in this thread, only those flags are relevant):

• NTS: Non-Thread Safe
• ZTS: Zend-Thread Safe

Me, as a PHP developer, I remember these rules:

• When PHP is meant to be used with mod_php in Apache -> it's better to use ZTS
• When PHP is meant to used with CGI/FASTCGI/Nginx/CommandLine -> It's better NTS

The default PHP in Nixos is built with ZTS and I think it should be NTS. NTS is also the default in many other distributions.

What's your point of view about that?

Relevant links:

• https://externals.io/message/65332
• ppa:ondrej/php-zts was removed oerdnj/deb.sury.org#1419
• NTS/ZTS versions ? fossar/nix-phps#63

CC:

• Apache maintainers: @lovek323
• PHP maintainers: @aanderse @etu @globin @Ma27 @talyz

[jtojnar]

Even if we change this line to false:

nixpkgs/pkgs/development/interpreters/php/generic.nix

Line 53 in b2737d4

, ztsSupport ? apxs2Support

PHP will still be built with ZTS due to

https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/5b01c4863fe9e4bc2702b2bbf66d292d23001a18/sapi/apache2handler/config.m4#L119

$ nix shell -f . apacheHttpd.dev -c sh -c '$(apxs -q SBINDIR)/$(apxs -q TARGET) -V' | grep threaded
  threaded:     yes (fixed thread count)

[talyz]

Yeah, I guess the question is if we should disable apxs2 by default and maybe provide a separate package with it enabled.

[drupol]

Yeah, I guess the question is if we should disable apxs2 by default and maybe provide a separate package with it enabled.

Could be an idea yeah !

[drupol]

Do you have something to say here @lovek323 ?

[lovek323]

Like you say, it would be great to be able to have the CLI php binary using NTS by default, if apxs is the only thing that's blocking this, a separate package for that sounds good to me.

[drupol]

@lovek323 Thanks for your input !

@jtojnar how about making 2 packages:

• php: This would be the default PHP package, without apxs2support and NTS
• php-apache: This would be the PHP package, with apxs2support and ZTS

WDYT?

[aanderse]

I'll mention that it is 2022 and people really shouldn't be using mod_php anymore... we have php-fpm which is almost always a better solution. @drupol I think your proposed solution is reasonable 👍

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/httpd/PHP

[drupol]

I'll mention that it is 2022 and people really shouldn't be using mod_php anymore... we have php-fpm which is almost always a better solution. @drupol I think your proposed solution is reasonable 👍

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/httpd/PHP

I definitely agree and this is why I opened this rfc.

[etu]

Well, the changes is merged now 🙂 🎉

[drupol]

Excellent :)