Doc #80794 [Opn->Fbk]: --enable-bcmath documentation incomplete

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=80794&edit=1 ID: 80794 Updated by: requinix@php.net Reported by: php4fan at gmail dot com Summary: --enable-bcmath documentation incomplete -Status: Open +Status: Feedback Type: Documentation Problem -Package: Documentation problem +Package: BC math related Operating System: all PHP Version: Irrelevant Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: What operating system? Linux? PHP's own installation docs are a little bit lower level than what Linux folks deal with. Here we talk about ./configure and --enable flags because that's what PHP itself is concerned with, but the Linux people who package PHP for distribution will do... whatever it is they do. This often means compiling the base PHP package separately from the various optional extensions, then having the extensions themselves available through package management. You don't ./configure PHP yourself. So while you are looking to install bcmath, and while the bc.installation page is technically correct, it's not actually the installation information that you need. This is casually mentioned in the general Unix installation docs > There are several ways to install PHP for the Unix platform, either with a compile > and configure process, or through various pre-packaged methods. This documentation > is mainly focused around the process of compiling and configuring PHP. https://www.php.net/manual/en/install.unix.php but mostly it's something that's assumed Linux developers are already familiar with. Make sense? Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2021-02-24 12:02:25] php4fan at gmail dot com Description: ------------ --- From manual page: https://php.net/bc.installation --- It says: "These functions are only available if PHP was configured with --enable-bcmath." So, I look at the output of phpinfo() on a particular installation of phpfpm 7.4 that is throwing "call to undefined function bcpow()" errors and I find: Configure Command: [.....] '--enable-bcmath=shared' [.....] So, that's confusing. There is a --enable-bcmath flag, yet the bc math functions are not available, and there is no "BC Math" section in phpinfo(). I guess I need to understand what "shared" means. For starters, I would expect to find more information at https://www.php.net/manual/en/bc.installation.php but there's nothing there. "These functions are only available if PHP was configured with --enable-bcmath. The Windows version of PHP has built-in support for this extension. You do not need to load any additional extensions in order to use these functions." The sentence "You do not need to load any additional extensions in order to use these functions" seems to refer only to Windows. What about linux? Do I need to load additional extensions there? So I think: let's look at the documentation about the "--enable-bcmath" configure flag. Maybe it explains what the value "shared" means. Perhaps it means that it allows to enable bcmath as a shared library-or-something, maybe an extension that can be loaded at runtime without recompiling. I don't know, let's look. So I found this: https://www.php.net/manual/en/configure.about.php "List of configure options". It's not listed there. It says: "Below is a partial list of configure options [...] Most configure options are listed in their appropriate locations on the extension reference pages and not here" Ok, so where is the "appropriate location on the extension reference pages"?? To me it looks like it should be here: https://php.net/bc.installation But again, nothing there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=80794&edit=1