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phpubuntuphp-extension

Is it safe to remove dev packages in Ubuntu after the PHP extension was build?

I'm building pdo_firebird extension with php5 and firebird pdo on ubuntu / debian tutorial on server provisioning.

Tutorial recommends installing a bunch of extensions: 

sudo apt-get install php5-dev firebird2.5-dev php-pear devscripts debget

I've checked Building extensions using phpize and other chapters from PHP Internals Book, but found nothing.

Is it safe to remove installed packages? What is a best practice? 

apt-get -y remove --purge php5-dev firebird2.5-dev php-pear devscripts debget
apt-get autoremove -y
Solution

  • It is safe to remove *-dev packages after building is done.

    But only the *-dev packages, but removing the *-dev packages will also remove any packages automatically installed with the *-dev packages as dependencies.

    E. g. libmcrypt-dev also installs libmcrypt4

    sudo apt-get -y install libmcrypt-dev
# run your build commands here ...
sudo apt-get -y purge libmcrypt-dev

    will result in:

    PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20151012/mcrypt.so' - libmcrypt.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0

    So you need to ensure your library packages are installed separate:

    sudo apt-get -y install libmcrypt-dev libmcrypt4
# run your build commands here ...
sudo apt-get -y purge libmcrypt-dev