View source for FreeBSD:php

This will install the PHP 5 base system on your FreeBSD machine from the ports tree, and clean up everything when it's done.

 # cd /usr/ports/lang/php5/ && make install distclean
 
often you will need a php extension installed. In order to help the various people who are stuck like I was, here is a list of possible extensions you may need/want:
                BCMATH          "bc style precision math functions" off \
                BZ2             "bzip2 library support" off \
                CALENDAR        "calendar conversion support" off \
                CTYPE           "ctype functions" on \
                CURL            "CURL support" off \
                DBA             "dba support" off \
                DBASE           "dBase library support" off \
                DOM             "DOM support" on \
                EXIF            "EXIF support" off \
                FILEINFO        "fileinfo support" off \
                FILEPRO         "filePro support" off \
                FRIBIDI         "FriBidi support" off \
                FTP             "FTP support" off \
                GD              "GD library support" off \
                GETTEXT         "gettext library support" off \
                GMP             "GNU MP support" off \
                HASH            "HASH Message Digest Framework" on \
                ICONV           "iconv support" on \
                IMAGICK         "ImageMagick support" off \
                IMAP            "IMAP support" off \
                INTERBASE       "Interbase 6 database support (Firebird)" off \
                LDAP            "OpenLDAP support" off \
                MBSTRING        "multibyte string support" off \
                MCRYPT          "Encryption support" off \
                MHASH           "Crypto-hashing support" off \
                MING            "ming shockwave flash support" off \
                MSSQL           "MS-SQL database support" off \
                MYSQL           "MySQL database support" off \
                MYSQLI          "MySQLi database support" off \
                NCURSES         "ncurses support (CLI only)" off \
                ODBC            "unixODBC support" off \
                OPENSSL         "OpenSSL support" off \
                PANDA           "panda support" off \
                PCNTL           "pcntl support (CLI only)" off \
                PCRE            "Perl Compatible Regular Expression support" on \
                PDF             "PDFlib support (implies GD)" off \
                PDO             "PHP Data Objects Interface (PDO)" on \
                PGSQL           "PostgreSQL database support" off \
                POSIX           "POSIX-like functions" on \
                PSPELL          "pspell support" off \
                READLINE        "readline support (CLI only)" off \
                RECODE          "recode support" off \
                SESSION         "session support" on \
                SHMOP           "shmop support" off \
                SIMPLEXML       "simplexml support" on \
                SNMP            "SNMP support" off \
                SOAP            "SOAP support" off \
                SOCKETS         "sockets support" off \
                SQLITE          "sqlite support" on \
                SYBASE_CT       "Sybase database support" off \
                SYSVMSG         "System V message support" off \
                SYSVSEM         "System V semaphore support" off \
                SYSVSHM         "System V shared memory support" off \
                TIDY            "TIDY support" off \
                TOKENIZER       "tokenizer support" on \
                WDDX            "WDDX support (implies XML)" off \
                XML             "XML support" on \
                XMLREADER       "XMLReader support" on \
                XMLRPC          "XMLRPC-EPI support" off \
                XMLWRITER       "XMLWriter support" on \
                XSL             "XSL support (Implies DOM)" off \
                YAZ             "YAZ support (ANSI/NISO Z39.50)" off \
                ZIP             "ZIP support" off \
                ZLIB            "ZLIB support" off

Initially my searches online led me to know I needed the session extension for php. As it wasn't intuitive to me, I manually added "--enable-session" to the Makefile in /usr/ports/lang/php5/. I was told this is the wrong approach, and it could affect me later. So there are two approaches from here. One way to find the two approaches:

 # ( cd /usr/ports && make search key=pcre | grep Path: | grep php5 )
 Path:   /usr/ports/devel/php5-pcre
 Path:   /usr/ports/lang/php5-extensions
 Path:   /usr/ports/www/horde-php5

so if I just want to install a single extension, it's probably found in /usr/ports/devel/php5-[[Variables|pcre]] or if I want to install several, I can install each individually, or go into the php extensions meta port

 # cd /usr/ports/lang/php5-extensions && make config

will give me an ncurses based window to go through and pick the extensions I want. After that I can do

 # make install distclean

as long as I'm still in the usr/ports/lang/php5-extensions directory.