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

• OS/Platform Support
  • GitHub-Hosted Runners
  • Self-Hosted Runners
• PHP Support
• PHP Extension Support
• Tools Support
• Coverage Support
  • Xdebug
  • PCOV
  • Disable Coverage
• Usage
  • Inputs
  • Outputs
  • Flags
  • Basic Setup
  • Matrix Setup
  • Nightly Build Setup
  • Thread Safe Setup
  • Force Update Setup
  • Verbose Setup
  • Multi-Arch Setup
  • Self Hosted Setup
  • Local Testing Setup
  • JIT Configuration
  • Cache Extensions
  • Cache Composer Dependencies
  • Composer GitHub OAuth
  • Inline PHP Scripts
  • Problem Matchers
  • Examples
• Versioning
• License
• Contributions
• Support This Project
• Dependencies
• Further Reading

☁️ OS/Platform Support

Both GitHub-hosted and self-hosted runners are suppported by setup-php on the following OS/Platforms.

GitHub-Hosted Runners

Self-Hosted Runners

• Refer to the self-hosted setup to use the action on self-hosted runners.
• Operating systems based on the above Ubuntu and Debian versions are also supported on a best effort basis.
• If the requested PHP version is pre-installed, setup-php switches to it, otherwise it installs the PHP version.

🎉 PHP Support

On all supported OS/Platforms the following PHP versions are supported as per the runner.

• PHP 5.3 to PHP 8.2 on GitHub-hosted runners.
• PHP 5.6 to PHP 8.2 on self-hosted runners.

Notes:

• Specifying 8.2 in php-version input installs a nightly build of PHP 8.2.0-dev. See nightly build setup for more information.
• To use JIT on PHP 8.0 and above, refer to the JIT configuration section.

➕ PHP Extension Support

PHP extensions can be set up using the extensions input. It accepts a string in csv-format.

• On Ubuntu, extensions which are available as a package, available on PECL or a git repository can be set up.

- name: Setup PHP with PECL extension
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    extensions: imagick, swoole

• On Windows, extensions available on PECL which have the DLL binary can be set up.

• On macOS, extensions available on PECL or a git repository can be set up.

• On Ubuntu and macOS to compile and install an extension from a git repository follow this guide.

• Extensions installed along with PHP if specified are enabled.

• Specific versions of extensions available on PECL can be set up by suffixing the extension's name with 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'
    extensions: swoole-1.9.3

• Pre-release versions extensions available on PECL can be set up by suffixing the extension's name 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: '8.0'
    extensions: xdebug-beta

• Shared extensions can be disabled by prefixing them with a :. All extensions depending on the specified extension will also be disabled.

- name: Setup PHP and disable opcache
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    extensions: :opcache

• All shared extensions can be disabled by specifying none. When none is specified along with other extensions, it is hoisted to the start of the input. So, all the shared extensions will be disabled first, then rest of the extensions in the input will be processed.

Note: This disables all core and third-party shared extensions and thus, can break some tools which need them. So, make sure you add the required extensions after none in the extensions input.

- name: Setup PHP without any shared extensions except mbstring
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    extensions: none, mbstring

• Extension intl can be set up with specific ICU version for PHP 5.6 and above 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: '8.0'
    extensions: intl-69.1

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

• These extensions have custom support:

  • cubrid, pdo_cubrid and gearman on Ubuntu.
  • geos on Ubuntu and macOS.
  • blackfire, couchbase, ioncube, oci8, pdo_firebird, pdo_oci, pecl_http, phalcon3 and phalcon4 on all supported OS.

• By default, extensions which cannot be added or disabled 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: '8.0'
    extensions: oci8
  env:
    fail-fast: true

🔧 Tools Support

These tools can be set up globally using the tools input. It accepts a string in csv-format.

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

- name: Setup PHP with tools
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    tools: php-cs-fixer, phpunit

• In addition to above tools any composer tool or package can also be set up globally by specifying it as vendor/package matching the listing on Packagist. This format accepts the same version constraints as composer.

- name: Setup PHP with tools
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    tools: vimeo/psalm

• To set up a particular version of a tool, specify it in the form tool:version.

  Version can be in the following format:

  • Semver. For example tool:1.2.3 or tool:1.2.3-beta1.
  • Major version. For example tool:1 or tool:1.x.
  • Major and minor version. For example tool:1.2 or tool:1.2.x.

  When you specify just the major version or the version in major.minor format, the latest patch version matching the input will be setup.

  Except for major versions of composer, For other tools when you specify only the major version or the version in major.minor format for any tool you can get rate limited by GitHub's API. To avoid this, it is recommended to provide a GitHub OAuth token. You can do that by setting COMPOSER_TOKEN environment variable.

- name: Setup PHP with tools
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    tools: php-cs-fixer:3, phpunit:8.5
  env:
    COMPOSER_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

• The latest stable version of composer is set up by default. You can set up the required composer version by specifying the major version v1 or v2, or the version in major.minor or semver format, Additionally for composer snapshot and preview can also be specified to set up the respective releases.

- name: Setup PHP with composer v2
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    tools: composer:v2

• If you do not use composer in your workflow, you can specify tools: none to skip it.

- name: Setup PHP without composer
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    tools: none

• Scripts phpize and php-config are set up with the same version as of the input PHP version.

• The latest version of blackfire cli is set up when blackfire is specified in tools input. Please refer to the official documentation for using blackfire with GitHub Actions.

• 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.

• 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: '8.0'
    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 set up it with tools input as the two instances of the tool might conflict.

📶 Coverage Support

Xdebug

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

- name: Setup PHP with Xdebug
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    coverage: xdebug

• When you specify coverage: xdebug, the latest version of Xdebug compatible with the PHP version is set up by default.
• If you need Xdebug 2.x on PHP 7.2, 7.3 or 7.4, you can specify coverage: xdebug2.

- name: Setup PHP with Xdebug 2.x
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '7.4'
    coverage: xdebug2

Note: Xdebug is enabled by default on Ubuntu GitHub Actions images, so if you are not using it in your workflow it is recommended to disable it as that will have a positive impact on your PHP performance. Please refer to the disable coverage section for details.

PCOV

Specify coverage: pcov to use PCOV and disable Xdebug.
Runs on PHP 7.1 and newer PHP versions.

• 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: '8.0'
    ini-values: pcov.directory=api #optional, see above for usage.
    coverage: pcov

• PHPUnit 8.x and above supports PCOV out of the box.
• If you are using PHPUnit 5.x, 6.x or 7.x, you need to set up pcov/clobber before executing your tests.

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

Disable Coverage

Specify coverage: none to disable both Xdebug and PCOV.

Disable coverage for these reasons:

• You are not generating coverage reports while testing.
• You are using phpdbg for running your tests.
• You are profiling your code using blackfire.
• You are using PHP in JIT mode. Please refer to JIT configuration section for more details.

- name: Setup PHP with no coverage driver
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    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 '8.0'.
• Accepts latest to set up the latest stable PHP version.
• Accepts nightly to set up a nightly build from the master branch of PHP.
• Accepts the format d.x, where d is the major version. For example 5.x, 7.x and 8.x.
• See PHP support for supported PHP versions.

extensions (optional)

• Specify the extensions you want to add or disable.
• Accepts a string in csv-format. For example mbstring, :opcache.
• Accepts none to disable all shared extensions.
• Shared extensions prefixed with : are disabled.
• 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.
• Accepts ini values with commas if wrapped in quotes. For example xdebug.mode="develop,coverage".

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.

Outputs

php-version

To use outputs, give the setup-php step an id, you can use the same to get the outputs in a later step.

• Provides the PHP version in semver format.

- name: Setup PHP
  id: setup-php
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'

- name: Print PHP version
  run: echo ${{ steps.setup-php.outputs.php-version }}

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: Setup PHP
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
    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: ['7.4', '8.0', '8.1']
        phpunit-versions: ['latest']
        include:
        - operating-system: 'ubuntu-latest'
          php-versions: '7.2'
          phpunit-versions: '8.5.21'
    steps:
    - name: Setup PHP
      uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
      with:
        php-version: ${{ matrix.php-versions }}
        extensions: mbstring, intl
        ini-values: post_max_size=256M, max_execution_time=180
        coverage: xdebug
        tools: php-cs-fixer, phpunit:${{ matrix.phpunit-versions }}

Nightly Build Setup

Setup a nightly build of PHP 8.2.

• This version is currently in development.
• Some user space extensions might not support this version currently.

steps:
- name: Setup nightly PHP
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.2'
    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 set up 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: Setup PHP
      uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
      with:
        php-version: '8.0'
      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 images are not updated to their latest patch release by default.
• You can specify the update environment variable to true for updating to the latest release.

- name: Setup PHP with latest versions
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'
  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: '8.0'

Multi-Arch Setup

Setup PHP on multiple architecture on Ubuntu GitHub Runners.

• PHP 5.6 to PHP 8.0 are supported by setup-php on multiple architecture on Ubuntu.
• For this, you can use shivammathur/node images as containers. These have compatible Nodejs installed for JavaScript based GitHub Actions.
• 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
        uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
        with:
          php-version: '8.0'

Self Hosted Setup

Setup PHP on a self-hosted runner.

• To set up a containerised self-hosted runner, refer to the following guides as per your base operating system.

  • Linux
  • Windows

• 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 service containers, then set up 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: Setup PHP
      uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
      with:
        php-version: ${{ matrix.php-versions }}
      env:
        runner: self-hosted # Specify the runner.

Notes

• Do not set up multiple self-hosted runners on a single server instance as parallel workflow will conflict with each other.
• Do not set up 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
    steps:
    - name: Setup PHP
      uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
      with:
        php-version: '8.0'

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

Choose the image tag which matches the runs-on property in your workflow. For example, if you are using ubuntu-20.04 in your workflow, run act -P ubuntu-20.04=shivammathur/node:20.04.

# 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:2004

# For runs-on: ubuntu-18.04
act -P ubuntu-18.04=shivammathur/node:1804

JIT Configuration

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

• To enable JIT, enable opcache in cli mode by setting opcache.enable_cli=1.
• JIT conflicts with Xdebug, PCOV, and other extensions which override zend_execute_ex function, so set coverage: none and disable any such extension if added.
• 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'
    coverage: none
    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 }}-

Composer GitHub OAuth

If you have a number of workflows which set up multiple tools or have many composer dependencies, you might hit the GitHub's rate limit for composer. Also, if you specify only the major version or the version in major.minor format, you can hit the rate limit. To avoid this you can specify an OAuth token 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: '8.0'
  env:
    COMPOSER_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Inline PHP Scripts

If you have to run multiple lines of PHP code in your workflow, you can do that easily without saving it to a file.

Put the code in the run property of a step and specify the shell as php {0}.

- name: Setup PHP
  uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
  with:
    php-version: '8.0'

- name: Run PHP code
  shell: php {0}
  run: |
    <?php
    $welcome = "Hello, world";
    echo $welcome;

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.

PHP

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: '8.0'
    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: '8.0'
    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: '8.0'
    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, security patches, 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, security patches 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.

Contributors of setup-php and other related projects

💖 Support This Project

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

Corporate Sponsors

Individual Sponsors

📦 Dependencies

• Node.js dependencies
• aaronparker/VcRedist
• mlocati/powershell-phpmanager
• ppa:ondrej/php
• shivammathur/cache-extensions
• shivammathur/composer-cache
• shivammathur/homebrew-extensions
• shivammathur/homebrew-php
• shivammathur/icu-intl
• shivammathur/php-builder
• shivammathur/php-builder-windows
• shivammathur/php-ubuntu
• shivammathur/php5-darwin
• shivammathur/php5-ubuntu

📑 Further Reading

• About GitHub Actions
• GitHub Actions Syntax
• Other Awesome Actions