Why does the PHP extension fail to load with _zval_ptr_dtor_wrapper error
Written by Benjamin Eberlei
/ Original link
on Mar. 28, 2017
Why does the PHP extension fail to load with _zval_ptr_dtor_wrapper error
I sometimes come across this error when loading an extension in PHP
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib64/php-zts/5.5/modules/myext.so' - /usr/lib64/php-zts/5.5/modules/myext.so: undefined symbol: _zval_ptr_dtor_wrapper in Unknown on line 0
From the Google results it is not very easy to find out what this means.
Technically the extension was compiled with a PHP version using the -enable-debug flag, which wraps all calls to zval_ptr_dtor in a wrapper macro that does not exist in a regular, non-debug build.
But a debug extension and non-debug PHP are incompatible.
PHP extensions are only compatible between different installations if the following constraints are the same for the compiling and the executing PHP binary:
- OS (Linux, Mac)
- libc (glibc or musl for Alpine)
- PHP version up to the minor level (5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1)
- extension version (20151012 for PHP 7.0)
- thread-safety (ZTS) or non-thread-safety (NTS)
- debug or non-debug (--enable-debug flag during compile).