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Stability addicts can keep quiet, PHP 5.3.3 is still the standard version provided with RHEL-6.

We'll soon have an official and supported way to install PHP version 5.4, beside the system version, without any effect on installed components. Announcement tells the life cycle will be 3 years.

Attention  it's a beta version, published for evaluation purpose.

Installation

Activation of the distribution channel (requires a valid subscription) from the RHN web interface or from command line:

# rhn-channel --add --channel=rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta

Installation of the meta-package and default components:

# yum install php54
...
======================================================================================================================================================
 Package                            Arch                    Version                          Repository                                          Size
======================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 php54                              x86_64                  1-7.el6                          rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  3.3 k
Installing for dependencies:
 php54-php-cli                      x86_64                  5.4.14-3.el6                     rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  2.6 M
 php54-php-common                   x86_64                  5.4.14-3.el6                     rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  566 k
 php54-php-pear                     noarch                  1:1.9.4-7.el6                    rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  370 k
 php54-php-process                  x86_64                  5.4.14-3.el6                     rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                   45 k
 php54-php-xml                      x86_64                  5.4.14-3.el6                     rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  109 k
 php54-runtime                      x86_64                  1-7.el6                          rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhscl-1-beta                  1.0 M

Transaction Summary
======================================================================================================================================================
Install       7 Package(s)

Total download size: 4.7 M
Installed size: 0  
Is this ok [y/N]: y

That's all ;)

Utilisation

Default version still 5.3.3

# php -v
PHP 5.3.3 (cli) (built: Nov 29 2012 04:12:23) 
Copyright (c) 1997-2010 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies

You need to explicitly ask to use the SCL version, standard (SCL) way:

# scl enable php54 "php -v"
PHP 5.4.14 (cli) (built: May 23 2013 07:42:19) 
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

You can also use (for this collection, not supported for others):

# /opt/rh/php54/root/usr/bin/php -v
PHP 5.4.14 (cli) (built: May 23 2013 07:42:19) 
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

You can also permanently activate the collection:

# source /opt/rh/php54/enable
# php -v
PHP 5.4.14 (cli) (built: May 23 2013 07:42:19) 
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

Use from Apache

Various way exist, we'll only see the mod_php case

# yum install php54-php

Warning : apache can't load 2 php5 modules, so if the standard module is already present, on apache startup, you will get the error message:

[Sun Jun 16 16:51:01 2013] [warn] module php5_module is already loaded, skipping

You need to uninstall (or disable) the standard module, and then apache will use the PHP 5.4 from the collection.

Conclusion

I think this is a very important new feature which should help for the adoption of recent PHP version in enterprise environment.

CentOS (or other clones) users can also try the packages available on the community project site : Software Collections

Questions, with no answer yet:

  • For CentOS, will those packages be available in some official repository, or third-party (as the tru repo for DTS) ?
  • Will a php55 collection exists ?
  • Will packages for  RHEL-5 be available ?
  • Will EPEL be able to provide more extensions ?
  • Which PHP version will be packaged in the finale RHSCL version ?