davidthorne.net

If like me you need to have RPM/.deb based PHP instead of a self compiled option (For example you are using something such as Plesk which wants RPM/.deb based PHP) and you don't want to play the rpm -Uvh --justdb (or dpkg equivalent) game I discovered today that you can compile just various modules of PHP using a combination of the phpize (found in the php-devel or php5-dev rpm/deb)

Quite why this hasn't occured to me before but it hadn't. All you need do is check out the applicable php version source, and then do the following:
(Please note $ = normal user # = root)
$ cd {php-version}/ext/{chosen extension}
$ phpize
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

An alternative is to su - to root and then
# cd /path/to/php/ext/module ; make install

then just add the "extension={extension}.so" in either php.ini or (as on CentOS/RHEL 5) in a {extension}.ini file in the /etc/php.d directory.

Thoughts, as always, appreciated.