Compiling PHP as an Apache Dynamic Shared Object (DSO)
------------------------------------------------------

Before you begin, check that your installed Apache version
is at least version 1.3.6.  Version 1.3.9 or later is even
better and you should seriously consider upgrading your Apache
to 1.3.9 or later.  This is especially true for glibc-2.1.1 
users.  There was a nasty bug related to how DSO's were
linked that wasn't fixed until Apache-1.3.9.

In order for this build method to work, your server must have 
been built to include mod_so (you can check by typing httpd -l)
and it needs to have the 'apxs' Perl script installed and
configured for your setup.  You can build such a server setup
using Step 1 below.  

Step 1: Build Apache once (if not already built) and make sure
mod_so is enabled.  Something like this would do the trick:

   cd apache-1.3.x
   ./configure --prefix=/some/path --enable-shared=max
   make
   make install

Refer to the README.configure file in the Apache distribution for full
details on Apache configure options.  Make sure /some/path/bin/apxs
exists at this point.  You need to know where to find this 'apxs'
program in order to move onto step 2.

Step 2: Build PHP

   cd php-3.0.x
   ./configure  --with-apxs=/some/path/bin/apxs \
                --with-config-file-path=/some/path
  make
  make install

You will of course most likely want more options here.  Run 
./configure --help for a full list.  If you are running Apache-1.3.9
or later, you should add the --with-xml switch since an xml parser
was included in Apache as of version 1.3.9 and you might as well
let PHP use it if it is there anyway.

Step 3: Edit /some/path/conf/httpd.conf and make sure you have a 
line similar to:

  AddType application/x-httpd-php3 .php3

If this is a brand new setup, you should of course also set the
other Apache site-specific things in your httpd.conf.  

Additionally you need to tell Apache to load and activate the 
PHP module. Add the following line to /some/path/conf/httpd.conf

    LoadModule php3_module libexec/libphp3.so

If you have a ClearModuleList in your httpd.conf file, you need
to add this line to:

    AddModule mod_php3.c 

You should also copy php3.ini-dist to /some/path/php3.ini and have a 
look at it.

Step 4: Start/Restart your server:

   /some/path/bin/apachectl start

or 

   /some/path/bin/apachectl restart

or
   /some/path/bin/apachectl graceful


Troubleshooting
---------------

If you are compiling PHP with support for a whole whack of modules and
want to load the whole mess dynamically, you may find yourself getting
the following error:

ld: fatal: too many symbols require `small' PIC references:
        have 2077, maximum 2048 -- recompile some modules -K PIC.

This should not happen on any Intel platforms, but I ran across it on
a Sun Sparc box running Solaris.  The message which comes from the
linker is assuming I am using the native Sun C compiler I guess and
suggests I use "-K PIC".  This may be correct if you are using that
compiler.  For gcc the way to fix it is to edit the PHP Makefile and
near the top find the line that says: CFLAGS_SHLIB = -fpic
and change the "-fpic" to "-fPIC".  I would imagine that this would
slow things down a bit though and you might want to consider doing a
static build instead.