Setup PHP in GitHub Actions

Setup PHP with required extensions, php.ini configuration, code-coverage support and various tools like composer in GitHub Actions. This action gives you a cross platform interface to set up the PHP environment you need to test your application. Refer to Usage section and examples to see how to use this.

Contents

PHP Support

Notes:

• Specifying 8.1 in php-version input installs a nightly build of PHP 8.1.0-dev. See nightly build setup for more information.
• To use JIT on PHP 8.0 and PHP 8.1 refer to the JIT configuration section.

OS/Platform Support

The action supports both GitHub-hosted runners and self-hosted runners on the following operating systems.

GitHub-Hosted Runners

Self-Hosted Runners

• Refer to the self-hosted setup to use the action on self-hosted runners.

PHP Extension Support

• Extensions loaded by default after setup-php runs can be found on the wiki.

• On ubuntu by default extensions which are available as a package can be installed. PECL extensions if not available as a package can be installed by specifying pecl in the tools input.

- name: Setup PHP with pecl extension
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    tools: pecl
    extensions: swoole

• On windows PECL extensions which have the DLL binary can be installed.

• On macOS PECL extensions can be installed.

• Extensions installed along with PHP if specified are enabled.

• Specific versions of PECL extensions can be installed by suffixing the version. This is useful for installing old versions of extensions which support end of life PHP versions.

- name: Setup PHP with specific version of PECL extension
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '5.4'
    tools: pecl
    extensions: swoole-1.9.3

• Pre-release versions of PECL extensions can be setup by suffixing the extension with its state i.e alpha, beta, devel or snapshot.

- name: Setup PHP with pre-release PECL extension
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    tools: pecl
    extensions: xdebug-beta

• Shared extensions can be removed by prefixing them with a :.

- name: Setup PHP and remove shared extension
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'  
    extensions: :opcache

• Extension intl can be setup with specific ICU version for PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.4 in Ubuntu workflows by suffixing intl with the ICU version. ICU 50.2 and newer versions are supported. Refer to ICU builds for the specific versions supported.

- name: Setup PHP with intl
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    extensions: intl-67.1

• These extensions have custom support - cubrid, pdo_cubrid and gearman on Ubuntu, and blackfire, couchbase, ioncube, oci8, pdo_oci, phalcon3 and phalcon4 on all supported OS.

• By default, extensions which cannot be added or removed gracefully leave an error message in the logs, the action is not interrupted. To change this behaviour you can set fail-fast flag to true.

- name: Setup PHP with fail-fast
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    extensions: oci8
  env:
    fail-fast: true

Tools Support

These tools can be setup globally using the tools input.

behat, blackfire, blackfire-player, codeception, composer, composer-normalize, composer-prefetcher, composer-require-checker, composer-unused, cs2pr, deployer, flex, grpc_php_plugin, infection, pecl, phan, phing, phinx, phive, phpcbf, phpcpd, php-config, php-cs-fixer, phpcs, phpize, phpmd, phpspec, phpstan, phpunit, prestissimo, protoc, psalm, symfony, vapor-cli

- name: Setup PHP with tools
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    tools: php-cs-fixer, phpunit

• To set up a particular version of a tool, specify it in the form tool:version. The latest stable version of composer is set up by default. You can set up the required composer version by specifying v1, v2, snapshot or preview as versions or the exact version in semver format.

- name: Setup PHP with composer v2
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    tools: composer:v2

• Tools prestissimo and composer-prefetcher will be skipped unless composer:v1 is also specified in tools input. It is recommended to drop prestissimo and use composer v2.

• The latest versions of both agent blackfire-agent and client blackfire are setup when blackfire is specified in tools input. Please refer to the official documentation for using blackfire with GitHub Actions.

• Version for other tools should be in semver format and a valid release of the tool. This is useful for installing tools for older versions of PHP. For example to set up PHPUnit on PHP 7.2.

- name: Setup PHP with tools
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.2'
    tools: phpunit:8.5.8

• By default, tools which cannot be set up gracefully leave an error message in the logs, the action is not interrupted. To change this behaviour you can set fail-fast flag to true.

- name: Setup PHP with fail-fast
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    tools: deployer
  env:
    fail-fast: true

Notes

• Input tools is useful to set up tools which you only use in GitHub Actions, thus keeping your composer.json tidy.
• If you do not want to use all your dev-dependencies in GitHub Actions workflow, you can run composer with --no-dev and install required tools using tools input to speed up your workflow.
• If you have a tool in your composer.json, do not setup it with tools input as the two instances of the tool might conflict.

Coverage Support

Xdebug

Specify coverage: xdebug to use Xdebug.
Runs on all PHP versions supported.

- name: Setup PHP with Xdebug
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    coverage: xdebug

Specify coverage: pcov to use PCOV and disable Xdebug.
PCOV supports PHP 7.1 and newer PHP versions.
Tests with PCOV run much faster than with Xdebug.
If your source code directory is other than src, lib or, app, specify pcov.directory using the ini-values input.

- name: Setup PHP with PCOV
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    ini-values: pcov.directory=api #optional, see above for usage.
    coverage: pcov

PHPUnit 8 and above supports PCOV out of the box.
If you are using PHPUnit 5, 6 or 7, you will need pcov/clobber.
Before executing your tests add the following step.

- name: Setup PCOV
  run: |
    composer require pcov/clobber
    vendor/bin/pcov clobber

Disable Coverage

Specify coverage: none to remove both Xdebug and PCOV.
Consider disabling the coverage using this PHP action for these reasons.

• You are not generating coverage reports while testing.
• It will remove Xdebug, which will have a positive impact on PHP performance.
• You are using phpdbg for running your tests.
• You are profiling your code using blackfire.

- name: Setup PHP with no coverage driver
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    coverage: none

Usage

Inputs

Specify using with keyword

php-version (required)

• Specify the PHP version you want to set up.
• Accepts a string. For example '7.4'.
• Accepts latest to set up the latest stable PHP version.
• See PHP support for supported PHP versions.

extensions (optional)

• Specify the extensions you want to add or remove.
• Accepts a string in csv-format. For example mbstring, :opcache.
• Non-default extensions prefixed with : are removed.
• See PHP extension support for more info.

ini-values (optional)

• Specify the values you want to add to php.ini.
• Accepts a string in csv-format. For example post_max_size=256M, max_execution_time=180.

coverage (optional)

• Specify the code coverage driver you want to set up.
• Accepts xdebug, pcov or none.
• See coverage support for more info.

tools (optional)

• Specify the tools you want to set up.
• Accepts a string in csv-format. For example: phpunit, phpcs
• See tools Support for tools supported.

Flags

Specify using env keyword

fail-fast (optional)

• Specify to mark the workflow as failed if an extension or tool fails to set up.
• This changes the default mode from graceful warnings to fail-fast.
• By default, it is set to false.
• Accepts true and false.

phpts (optional)

• Specify to set up thread-safe version of PHP on windows.
• Accepts ts and nts.
• By default, it is set to nts.
• See thread safe setup for more info.

update (optional)

• Specify to update PHP on the runner to the latest patch version.
• Accepts true and false.
• By default, it is set to false.
• See force update setup for more info.

See below for more info.

Basic Setup

Setup a particular PHP version.

steps:
- name: Checkout
  uses: actions/checkout@v2

- name: Setup PHP
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    extensions: mbstring, intl
    ini-values: post_max_size=256M, max_execution_time=180
    coverage: xdebug    
    tools: php-cs-fixer, phpunit

Matrix Setup

Setup multiple PHP versions on multiple operating systems.

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.operating-system }}
    strategy:
      matrix:
        operating-system: [ubuntu-latest, windows-latest, macos-latest]
        php-versions: ['5.6', '7.0', '7.1', '7.2', '7.3', '7.4']
    name: PHP ${{ matrix.php-versions }} Test on ${{ matrix.operating-system }}
    steps:
    - name: Checkout
      uses: actions/checkout@v2

    - name: Setup PHP
      uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
      with:
        php-version: ${{ matrix.php-versions }}
        extensions: mbstring, intl
        ini-values: post_max_size=256M, max_execution_time=180
        coverage: xdebug        
        tools: php-cs-fixer, phpunit

Nightly Build Setup

Setup a nightly build of PHP 8.1.

• This version is currently in development.
• PECL is installed by default with PHP 8.1 on both ubuntu and macOS.
• Some user space extensions might not support this version currently.

steps:
- name: Checkout
  uses: actions/checkout@v2

- name: Setup nightly PHP
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.1'
    extensions: mbstring
    ini-values: post_max_size=256M, max_execution_time=180
    coverage: xdebug
    tools: php-cs-fixer, phpunit

Thread Safe Setup

Setup TS or NTS PHP on Windows.

• NTS versions are setup by default.
• On Ubuntu and macOS only NTS versions are supported.
• On Windows both TS and NTS versions are supported.

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: windows-latest
    name: Setup PHP TS on Windows
    steps:
    - name: Checkout
      uses: actions/checkout@v2

    - name: Setup PHP
      uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
      with:
        php-version: '7.4'
      env:
        phpts: ts # specify ts or nts

Force Update Setup

Update to the latest patch of PHP versions.

• Pre-installed PHP versions on the GitHub Actions runner are not updated to their latest patch release by default.
• You can specify the update environment variable to true to force update to the latest release.

- name: Setup PHP with latest versions
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
  env:
    update: true # specify true or false

Verbose Setup

Debug your workflow

To debug any issues, you can use the verbose tag instead of v2.

- name: Setup PHP with logs
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@verbose
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'

Multi-Arch Setup

Setup PHP on multiple architecture on Ubuntu GitHub Runners.

• PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.4 are supported by setup-php on multiple architecture on Ubuntu.
• For this, you can use shivammathur/node images as containers. These have compatible Nodejs and spc utility.
• Using spc you can run setup-php on both i386 and amd64 containers as opposed to default syntax, which only supports amd64.
• Currently, for Arm based setup, you will need self-hosted runners.

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container: shivammathur/node:latest-${{ matrix.arch }}
    strategy:
      matrix:
        arch: ["amd64", "i386"]
    steps:
      - name: Install PHP
        run: |
          # Update spc (See https://github.com/shivammathur/spc for options)
          spc -U

          # Install PHP
          spc --php-version "7.4" \
              --extensions "mbstring, intl" \
              --ini-values "post_max_size=256M, max_execution_time=180" \
              --coverage "xdebug" \
              --tools "php-cs-fixer, phpunit"

Self Hosted Setup

Setup PHP on a self-hosted runner.

• To set up a dockerized self-hosted runner, refer to this guide to set up in an Ubuntu container and refer to this guide to set up in a Windows container.
• To set up the runner directly on the host OS or in a virtual machine, follow this requirements guide before setting up the self-hosted runner.
• If your workflow uses services, then setup the runner on a Linux host or in a Linux virtual machine. GitHub Actions does not support nested virtualization on Linux, so services will not work in a dockerized container.

Specify the environment variable runner with the value self-hosted. Without this your workflow will fail.

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: self-hosted
    strategy:
      matrix:        
        php-versions: ['5.6', '7.0', '7.1', '7.2', '7.3', '7.4', '8.0']
    name: PHP ${{ matrix.php-versions }}
    steps:
    - name: Checkout
      uses: actions/checkout@v2

    - name: Setup PHP
      uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
      with:
        php-version: ${{ matrix.php-versions }}
      env:
        runner: self-hosted # Specify the runner.

Notes

• Do not setup multiple self-hosted runners on a single server instance as parallel workflow will conflict with each other.
• Do not setup self-hosted runners on the side on your development environment or your production server.
• Avoid using the same labels for your self-hosted runners which are used by GitHub-hosted runners.

Local Testing Setup

Test your Ubuntu workflow locally using nektos/act.

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: PHP 7.4 Test
    steps:
    - name: Checkout
      uses: actions/checkout@v2

    - name: Setup PHP
      uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
      with:
        php-version: 7.4

Run the workflow locally with act using shivammathur/node docker image.

# For runs-on: ubuntu-latest
act -P ubuntu-latest=shivammathur/node:latest

# For runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
act -P ubuntu-20.04=shivammathur/node:focal

# For runs-on: ubuntu-18.04
act -P ubuntu-18.04=shivammathur/node:bionic

# For runs-on: ubuntu-16.04
act -P ubuntu-16.04=shivammathur/node:xenial

JIT Configuration

Enable Just-in-time(JIT) on PHP 8.0 and PHP 8.1.

• To enable JIT, enable opcache in cli mode by setting opcache.enable_cli=1.
• By default, opcache.jit=1235 and opcache.jit_buffer_size=256M are set which can be changed using ini-values input.
• For detailed information about JIT related directives refer to the official PHP documentation.

For example to enable JIT in tracing mode with buffer size of 64 MB.

- name: Setup PHP with JIT in tracing mode
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    ini-values: opcache.enable_cli=1, opcache.jit=tracing, opcache.jit_buffer_size=64M

Cache Extensions

You can cache PHP extensions using shivammathur/cache-extensions and action/cache GitHub Actions. Extensions which take very long to set up when cached are available in the next workflow run and are enabled directly. This reduces the workflow execution time.
Refer to shivammathur/cache-extensions for details.

Cache Composer Dependencies

If your project uses composer, you can persist the composer's internal cache directory. Dependencies cached are loaded directly instead of downloading them while installation. The files cached are available across check-runs and will reduce the workflow execution time.

- name: Get composer cache directory
  id: composer-cache
  run: echo "::set-output name=dir::$(composer config cache-files-dir)"

- name: Cache dependencies
  uses: actions/cache@v2
  with:
    path: ${{ steps.composer-cache.outputs.dir }}
    key: ${{ runner.os }}-composer-${{ hashFiles('**/composer.lock') }}
    restore-keys: ${{ runner.os }}-composer-

- name: Install dependencies
  run: composer install --prefer-dist

Notes

• Please do not cache vendor directory using action/cache as that will have side effects.
• If you do not commit composer.lock, you can use the hash of composer.json as the key for your cache.

key: ${{ runner.os }}-composer-${{ hashFiles('**/composer.json') }}

• If you support a range of composer dependencies and use prefer-lowest and prefer-stable options, you can store them in your matrix and add them to the keys.

key: ${{ runner.os }}-composer-${{ hashFiles('**/composer.lock') }}-${{ matrix.prefer }}-
restore-keys: ${{ runner.os }}-composer-${{ matrix.prefer }}-

Cache Node.js Dependencies

If your project has node.js dependencies, you can persist NPM or yarn cache directory. The cached files are available across check-runs and will reduce the workflow execution time.

- name: Get node.js cache directory
  id: node-cache-dir
  run: echo "::set-output name=dir::$(npm config get cache)" # Use $(yarn cache dir) for yarn

- name: Cache dependencies
  uses: actions/cache@v2
  with:
    path: ${{ steps.node-cache-dir.outputs.dir }}
    key: ${{ runner.os }}-node-${{ hashFiles('**/package-lock.json') }} # Use '**/yarn.lock' for yarn
    restore-keys: ${{ runner.os }}-node-

Note: Please do not cache node_modules directory as that will have side effects.

Composer GitHub OAuth

If you have a number of workflows which setup multiple tools or have many composer dependencies, you might hit the GitHub's rate limit for composer. To avoid that you can add an OAuth token to the composer's config by setting COMPOSER_TOKEN environment variable. You can use GITHUB_TOKEN secret for this purpose.

- name: Setup PHP
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
  env:
    COMPOSER_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Problem Matchers

Problem matchers are json configurations which identify errors and warnings in your logs and surface them prominently in the GitHub Actions UI by highlighting them and creating code annotations.

Setup problem matchers for your PHP output by adding this step after the setup-php step.

- name: Setup problem matchers for PHP
  run: echo "::add-matcher::${{ runner.tool_cache }}/php.json"

PHPUnit

Setup problem matchers for your PHPUnit output by adding this step after the setup-php step.

- name: Setup problem matchers for PHPUnit
  run: echo "::add-matcher::${{ runner.tool_cache }}/phpunit.json"

PHPStan

PHPStan supports error reporting in GitHub Actions, so it does not require problem matchers.

- name: Setup PHP
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    tools: phpstan

- name: Run PHPStan
  run: phpstan analyse src

Psalm

Psalm supports error reporting in GitHub Actions with an output format github.

- name: Setup PHP
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    tools: psalm

- name: Run Psalm
  run: psalm --output-format=github

Tools with checkstyle support

For tools that support checkstyle reporting like phpstan, psalm, php-cs-fixer and phpcs you can use cs2pr to annotate your code.
For examples refer to cs2pr documentation.

Here is an example with phpcs.

- name: Setup PHP
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    tools: cs2pr, phpcs

- name: Run phpcs
  run: phpcs -q --report=checkstyle src | cs2pr

Examples

Examples of using setup-php with various PHP Frameworks and Packages.

Versioning

• Use the v2 tag as setup-php version. It is a rolling tag and is synced with the latest minor and patch releases. With v2 you automatically get the bug fixes, new features and support for latest PHP releases. For debugging any issues verbose tag can be used temporarily. It outputs all the logs and is also synced with the latest releases.
• Semantic release versions can also be used. It is recommended to use dependabot with semantic versioning to keep the actions in your workflows up to date.
• Commit SHA can also be used, but are not recommended. They have to be updated with every release manually, without which you will not get any bug fixes or new features.
• It is highly discouraged to use the master branch as version, it might break your workflow after major releases as they have breaking changes.
• If you are using the v1 tag or a 1.x.y version, you should switch to v2 as v1 only gets critical bug fixes. Maintenance support for v1 will be dropped with the last PHP 8.0 release.

License

• The scripts and documentation in this project are under the MIT License.
• This project has multiple dependencies. Their licenses can be found in their respective repositories.
• The logo for setup-php is a derivative work of php.net logo and is licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License.

Contributions

Contributions are welcome!

• See Contributor's Guide before you start.
• If you face any issues or want to suggest a feature/improvement, start a discussion here.

Join the list of setup-php contributors

Support This Project

• If setup-php saved your developer time, please consider sponsoring setup-php:

• Please reach out if you have any questions regarding sponsoring setup-php.
• Please star the project and share it. If you blog, please share your experience of using this action.

Huge thanks to the following companies for supporting setup-php

Dependencies

Further Reading