Sometimes, using the pecl installer is not an option.
This could be because you're behind a firewall, or it could be because the
extension you want to install is not available as a PECL compatible
package, such as unreleased extensions from SVN. If you need to build such
an extension, you can use the lower-level build tools to perform the build
manually.
The phpize command is used to prepare the build
environment for a PHP extension. In the following sample, the sources for
an extension are in a directory named extname:
$ cd extname $ phpize $ ./configure $ make # make install
A successful install will have created extname.so and put it
into the PHP
extensions directory. You'll need
to and adjust php.ini and add an extension=extname.so
line before you can use the extension.
If the system is missing the phpize command, and precompiled
packages (like RPM's) are used, be sure to also install the appropriate
devel version of the PHP package as they often include the
phpize command along with the appropriate header files to
build PHP and its extensions.
Execute phpize --help to display additional usage information.