Install PHP Extension Using Old Mac

[ben.turner]

Hey @braddalton – the instructions for compiling additional PHP extensions that were linked in the associated StackOverflow thread are here:

How do I compile additional PHP extensions?

You can use this guide to compile most PECL extensions in Local. We’ll use SSH2 as the example here. Download and extract the appropriate PECL extension Download the appropriate version here: https://pecl.php.net/package/ssh2 (if you’re using PHP 7+, you need SSH2 1.0+) Extract the archive into the site’s /app directory. Install Dependencies Required for pretty much all PHP extensions that you’ll compile. Once you do this once, you don’t need to do it for subsequent PHP extensions for …

Those instructions are for a much older version of Local (we sometimes call that “Local Classic”) and were specific to when Local used Docker to manage the PHP process.

Since the 5.x version, Local no longer uses Docker and there isn’t a good way to compile additional extensions for PHP that Local uses. This mostly has to due with the way that PHP is compiled for MacOS, and in particular the various code-signing steps that we’ve had to do to run PHP natively for Local.

Can you give us a little more detail about the phpspreadsheet extension? Is this a requirement for a WP plugin you are using on a site?