CLI/CGI -z command line options is broken

Why not make -z an alias for -d zend_extension?

• Davey

On 2/10/25 11:14 PM, Larry Garfield wrote:

Hi internals

We received a bug report (https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/17740)
that the -z command line option for CLI/CGI doesn't actually work.
This option is supposed to load a zend extension using a command line
argument.
However, it turns out that the extension doesn't actually load: PHP
will claim that the extension's loaded (in some places), but in reality
it never loaded properly.
I did an analysis of why this is happening in that GitHub thread, and a
clean solution isn't straight-forward.
Christoph figured out that this option has been broken since at least
PHP 5.5, a long time.
As passing -d zend_extension=foo on the command line is already a
suitable replacement, we'd like to just remove the -z option in PHP
8.5 instead of fixing it.

Are there any objections against this? Please let us know.

Kind regards
Niels

Seems reasonable to me. Perhaps update the -d help text accordingly, if needed?

--Larry Garfield

Hi

Just to clarify: the -d option just sets an ini option.
One idea could be to make -z print out a message telling the user to use "-d zend_extension=...". That would make the transition more "gradual".
OTOH this didn't work for ages so nobody realistically relies on this option.

Kind regards
Niels