mise use php@latest && dependency hell #4560

laluka · 2025-02-28T18:58:13Z

laluka
Feb 28, 2025

Alright, here is a quick one that bugs me and I think we should do something about.
I'm not sure about the right approach, let's get the brainstorm started! 🤔

mise use php@latest
php --version
# THIS SHOULD WORK

But the actual workflow for newcomers is as follows:

mise use php@latest
/root/.local/share/mise/plugins/php/bin/install: line 343: locate: command not found
/root/.local/share/mise/plugins/php/bin/install: line 344: locate: command not found
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100 20.0M    0 20.0M    0     0  5374k      0 --:--:--  0:00:03 --:--:-- 7446k
buildconf: autoconf not found.
           You need autoconf version 2.68 or newer installed
           to build PHP from Git.
mise ERROR ~/.local/share/mise/plugins/php/bin/install failed
Determining configuration options...
/root/.local/share/mise/plugins/php/bin/install: line 343: locate: command not found
/root/.local/share/mise/plugins/php/bin/install: line 344: locate: command not found
Downloading source code...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100 20.0M    0 20.0M    0     0  5374k      0 --:--:--  0:00:03 --:--:-- 7446k
Extracting source code...
Running buildconfig...
buildconf: Checking installation
buildconf: autoconf not found.
           You need autoconf version 2.68 or newer installed
           to build PHP from Git.
mise ERROR failed to install asdf:mise-plugins/[email protected]
mise ERROR ~/.local/share/mise/plugins/php/bin/install exited with non-zero status: exit code 1
mise ERROR Run with --verbose or MISE_VERBOSE=1 for more information

Okok, missing locate. Fair enough but not first shot.

apt update && apt install -y locate
mise use php@latest
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100 20.0M    0 20.0M    0     0  5175k      0 --:--:--  0:00:03 --:--:-- 6037k
buildconf: autoconf not found.
           You need autoconf version 2.68 or newer installed
           to build PHP from Git.
mise ERROR ~/.local/share/mise/plugins/php/bin/install failed
Determining configuration options...
Downloading source code...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100 20.0M    0 20.0M    0     0  5175k      0 --:--:--  0:00:03 --:--:-- 6037k
Extracting source code...
Running buildconfig...
buildconf: Checking installation
buildconf: autoconf not found.
           You need autoconf version 2.68 or newer installed
           to build PHP from Git.
mise ERROR failed to install asdf:[email protected]
mise ERROR ~/.local/share/mise/plugins/php/bin/install exited with non-zero status: exit code 1
mise ERROR Run with --verbose or MISE_VERBOSE=1 for more information

Ok, autoconf, altright.

apt update && apt install -y locate autoconf
mise use php@latest

And so on, and so on. Life is pain. 💀

I thinkg we should, from best to worst :

Offer a static php by default, faster, just works, might miss a few specific libs or stubs
Offer a build option with a prompt y/n for automated libs installation
Print out a one-liner OR documentation to get the core utilities and libs (build-essential, make, autoconf, locate, libxml-dev, libgd-dev, libXXX-dev, *30+)

I know managing libs for various OS can be painful, but maybe there are usual ways to track them down and suggest an easy install, because currently, I can install php with mise as I know the library naming convention and have time for this, but younglings are definitely lost AF when it comes to using php through mise. Why install a lib as root to install python in userland self compiled? Why isn't this easyer? Why do we still have php in 2025 and stuff! 🙃

Have a nice one 🌹

jdx · 2025-03-19T11:12:13Z

jdx
Mar 19, 2025
Maintainer

Dependency management is called out as the top anti-goal of the project: https://mise.jdx.dev/roadmap.html#anti-goals

Reason being: it's too much maintenance work and too specific to individual setups. I'd much rather give no information than wrong information. What we can do is document what is required. This does seem to be done somewhat in the current readme for mise-php which links to https://github.com/asdf-community/asdf-php/blob/248e9c6e2a7824510788f05e8cee848a62200b65/.github/workflows/workflow.yml#L30

but I think that list should just go straight into the README directly so the apt commands are right there.

Offer a static php by default, faster, just works, might miss a few specific libs or stubs

is there one? This isn't something most languages offer and open source efforts for ruby and python have proven to be a ton of work for maintainers. If this is possible someone should certainly do it but it's not at all a mise problem, it's a php problem.

12 replies

hverlin Apr 12, 2025

Would it make sense to create a cookbook for PHP? This way we can reference some ways to set up PHP with mise.

laluka Apr 12, 2025
Author

Gg for the deps extraction/documentation!
On the static side, now, yes, there seem to be smooth options: https://dl.static-php.dev/static-php-cli/common/

jbcaprell Apr 25, 2025

It has been a while since I have given this much thought, but I think the ‘problem’ for a lot of folks who come to mise and expect mise use php@latest to ‘just work’ is that asdf-community/asdf-php is essentially abandonware. If you attempt to use the macOS dependencies as-given, most users will find themselves up-a-creek because installing [email protected] from Homebrew has been disabled since October 2024. It’s easy enough to work around this if you’ve got even the tiniest amount of technical sophistication about package management, but a lot of people don’t!

Updating the mise-forked version of asdf-php to use a more sensible version of openssl, and incorporating this change:

asdf-community/asdf-php#154 (comment)

… would get 90+% of people where they need to be, I think.

adwinying Jul 19, 2025

I've repackaged static-php-cli so it could be easily installed with ubi: #4720 (comment)

laluka Jul 19, 2025
Author

Bro.. 🔥🥹🤩

lukejans · 2025-09-07T16:06:44Z

lukejans
Sep 7, 2025

I'm having issues with mise too but on apple silicon. PHP Support #4720

0 replies

s4093120 · 2025-09-18T12:38:32Z

s4093120
Sep 18, 2025

for macOS would it be possible to support brew as a backend? Currently PHP installs via mise on windows works smoothly but on Mac I'm forced to use brew.

3 replies

lukejans Sep 18, 2025

I would love this. shivammathur/homebrew-php seems to be the only thing that works seamlessly on macOS

jdx Sep 18, 2025
Maintainer

definitely no

lukejans Sep 18, 2025

Yeah I figured. It doesn't seem like it aligns with the goals of mise. Thanks a bunch for letting us know!

kwhandy · 2026-01-28T06:42:39Z

kwhandy
Jan 28, 2026

if you are in linux make sure to install (or just leave it as below which if already exists then it would update existing):

sudo apt install -y autoconf bison build-essential curl libssl-dev libxml2-dev libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev libzip-dev zlib1g-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libonig-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev re2c pkg-config libgd-dev

then reboot the machine to restart daemons, then just run mise use -g php@<whatever_version_you_need> that later setup the php itself and the composer; tbh this is the trickiest setup i've ever found in mise environment, php requires lots of things just to do simple thingT_T

0 replies

rozsazoltan · 2026-04-17T20:10:23Z

rozsazoltan
Apr 17, 2026

I ran into similar issues, and most of the PHP mise plugins couldn't find many versions either. I had to put together my own, with support for Composer, PECL, and PIE.

https://github.com/verzly/mise-php

In addition, I previously experimented with pre-compiled binaries provided by static-php-cli:

https://github.com/verzly/php

0 replies

Uh oh!

mise use php@latest && dependency hell #4560

Uh oh!

Replies: 5 comments · 15 replies

Uh oh!

jdx Mar 19, 2025 Maintainer

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

laluka Apr 12, 2025 Author

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

laluka Jul 19, 2025 Author

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

jdx Sep 18, 2025 Maintainer

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Replies: 5 comments 15 replies

jdx
Mar 19, 2025
Maintainer

laluka Apr 12, 2025
Author

laluka Jul 19, 2025
Author

jdx Sep 18, 2025
Maintainer