Compiling From Source vs. Pre-compiled Windows Binaries

So in the past I've always used the pre-compiled Windows PHP binaries but then this guide caught my attention.

That brings me to this:

• Why would someone want to compile PHP from the sources when the binaries are available for them?
• Is there a performance bonus I should be aware of?
• If so, is it a significant enough amount that I should take notice?
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For reference, I use PHP for mostly CLI applications mainly for bulk data processing and some website info collection.

My system specs: Windows 7 x64, 6gb RAM, Intel Q6600 (2.4gHz x 4).

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There are three good reasons I can think of for compiling PHP rather than using a binary build on Windows:

• you need a compiled in extension or compile-time-option that does not come as standard with available binaries

• you are short of memory and need a leaner PHP executable devoid of extensions you do not use

• you want a binary compiled specifically for your processor/environment to gain the small performance boost this might achieve (possible if you have an unusual setup)

Otherwise, just stick with the binary.

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If you trust the provider of the binaries that they aren't doing something evil, then I don't see how the performance would be significantly different from anything you could compile, unless your compiler is significantly better than the norm.

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As Dagon indicated, really paranoid (or once-bitten) sysadmins would rather compile from source.

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Why would someone want to compile PHP from the sources when the binaries are available for them?

I suppose one reason would be to enable the specific extensions one needs -- possibly compiling them statically, instead of using external .dll files

Another reason (mostly on Linux, though) would be to have the latest version of PHP -- which is generally not the one provided by distributions.

Is there a performance bonus I should be aware of?

I suppose that, if you have some specific architecture on your server, the binary generated by a generic compilation could be less efficient than one generated specifically for it -- provided you used the right configuration options and switches to compile.

Also, if you compile (only) the extensions you need as embedded into the resulting binary, that's a couple of files you won't need to load dynamically.

is it a significant enough amount that I should take notice?

Considering you are not running some heavy-loaded website with hundreds of requests per second... not sure that compiling yourself would be that interesting...

Especially considering that compiling PHP on Windows is a bit harder than on Linux...