add install options pages

[carlos-granados]

Replaces the More install options placeholder with an overview page and four sub pages, one per route.

Overview — a table of all five ways in (installer, Docker, PIE, prebuilt binaries, from source), what each one installs (interpreter or extension), and what it suits. Plus the interpreter-vs-extension distinction, since that is the axis the table sorts on.

PIE — installing the extension into an existing PHP with the PHP Foundation's extension installer.

Prebuilt binaries — the interpreter and the extension from the Releases page, with how to work out which of the 80 assets you need (php -v, thread safety, php-config --extension-dir) and the four file-naming patterns.

From source — Linux and macOS, extension and interpreter. Framed as a last resort.

Building on Windows — its own page, because the toolchain is entirely different.

Tested rather than transcribed

Run in containers on Debian/arm64/PHP 8.4, using the documented commands verbatim including the releases/latest/download/ URLs:

• Prebuilt interpreter — downloads, runs, reports the debugger, and is self-contained (mode=debug, start_with_request=yes with no ini file).
• Prebuilt extension — into extension_dir, zend_extension= line, loads, extension_loaded("php_debugger") true.
• From source — phpize && ./configure --enable-php-debugger && make produces modules/php_debugger.so, which loads clean.
• The asset matrix was checked to add up: 80 files = 4 PHP versions × nts/ts × 5 platforms × (interpreter + extension).

Not tested: Windows. Those instructions are transcribed from this repo's own release.yml (build-php-windows), which is how the released .exe files are built, and from config.w32. Solid provenance, but nobody has run them from this page — worth a trial on real hardware before relying on it. The --disable-opcache-jit requirement and the Release / Release_TS output paths both come from that workflow.

macOS and Windows details on the binaries page come from the release assets and documented platform behaviour, not from runs.

[github-actions]

PR Preview Action v1.8.1
Preview removed because the pull request was closed.
2026-08-24 20:26 UTC