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Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2020 08:11:25 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Are PECL modules preferable?
From: thruska@cubiclesoft.com (Thomas Hruska)

On 3/23/2020 3:53 PM, Johannes Schlüter wrote:
> For Windows pecl produces builds where we can, while users have to
> install by hand.

Yeah, I've noticed this and thought about building a tool to help 
automate installation.

However, it would be much easier to use PECL extensions on Windows if 
PHP on Windows actually had a simple way to add all the DLLs in a PECL 
extension to *just* the 'ext' directory and not have to copy multiple 
DLLs all over the place.

For example, imagick has a ton of imported DLLs that are referenced by 
the main extension DLL, which fails to load for a lot of people.  Then 
they have to go searching Google to figure out how to fix it for each 
separate SAPI.

I'm thinking the problem is something that can be remedied with 
SetDllDirectory():

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winbase/nf-winbase-setdlldirectorya

Or AddDllDirectory():

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/libloaderapi/nf-libloaderapi-adddlldirectory

Depending on if WinXP support is still a thing and/or having multiple 
directories is even possible.  Calling LoadLibraryEx() looks like it 
would be a pain to implement given that the only references in the 
entire code to "LoadLibrary" is pushed all the way back into m4/configure?

As PHP parses the 'extension_dir' INI option, it could call the relevant 
function above to allow for loading additional DLLs from the same 
directory when loading extensions.  Doing that would fix so many Windows 
loader related issues that people have with getting the precompiled PECL 
extensions to work on Windows (especially with mixed SAPI environments).

-- 
Thomas Hruska
CubicleSoft President

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