Installation

Prebuilt binaries

Download the latest release for your platform from GitHub Releases.

Move it somewhere in your PATH:

$ mv zphp-linux-x86_64 /usr/local/bin/zphp
$ chmod +x /usr/local/bin/zphp

Building from source

Requires Zig 0.15.1 and the system libraries below. Run build commands from the repository root.

Ubuntu/Debian:

$ sudo apt-get install -y libpcre2-dev libsqlite3-dev zlib1g-dev \
    libmysqlclient-dev libpq-dev libssl-dev libnghttp2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev \
    libxml2-dev libicu-dev libgmp-dev libgd-dev libsodium-dev libldap2-dev
$ zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast
$ ./zig-out/bin/zphp --version

macOS (Homebrew):

$ brew install mysql-client libpq openssl@3 nghttp2 curl libxml2 icu4c gmp gd libsodium openldap
$ make release
$ ./zig-out/bin/zphp --version

Source builds put the executable at zig-out/bin/zphp. Add zig-out/bin to your PATH or use ./zig-out/bin/zphp in the commands below. CI uses macOS 15; Zig 0.15.1 has known linking problems with the macOS 26 SDK.

Verify it works

$ echo '<?php echo "hello from zphp\n";' > hello.php
$ zphp run hello.php
hello from zphp