How to install specific version of PHP from source alongside Apache using Chef?

Question

I am using Chef's community cookbooks, in particular the apt, php and apache2 cookbooks. My role which is ran on a node:

name "development"

# list of recipes to run
run_list(
    "recipe[apt]",
    "recipe[php::source]",
    "recipe[apache2]",
    "recipe[apache2::mod_php5]",
    "recipe[apache2::mod_rewrite]",
)

# attributes setup
override_attributes(
    "php" => {
        "version" => "5.4.27",
        "checksum" => "3080690bbb14d798a511e325a81a6f32"
    }
)

As you can see, I would like to install PHP 5.4.27 from source. If I run only the php::source, I indeed have PHP 5.4.27. However, when I run the apache2 cookbook as well, the apache2::mod_php5 installs another PHP 5.3 from repository (Ubuntu 12.04 has PHP 5.3 in its repo). I guess the package installs libapache2-mod-php5 which relies on php5 package therefore the PHP is installed again.

I don't want two versions of PHP. I would like to have only one; the PHP 5.4.27. Both for Apache and CLI. Can I somehow instruct apache cookbook to use the PHP 5.4.27?

Answer 1

Not if you use the apache2::mod_php5 recipe.

If you look into the recipe you can see that it installs the libapache2-mod-php5 package, which brings php5-common as a dependency.

If you want to avoid pulling in that, you'll have to write your own recipe for the php module, probably compiling the module from source.

Answer 2

You also can do that by creating a cookbook by yourself which includes a special php installation file