I mentioned a similar idea in#58, which is to compile with glibc-gcc under Linux and statically link all other libraries except glibc. The advantage of compiling in this way is that you can distribute and use it under a system that uses gnu-libc as libc, and supports dynamic loading of external extensions. But this also imposes requirements on the system environment, and is of little help to extensions such as glfw that use system libraries.

There has to be a way,
I have a php installed with glfw, and it starts 3d programs written in php, instantly and I think it has potential to be a new cross-os game platform thing, the php code of the program could be written once and distributed to many operating systems,since you have already made it for mac and win, what remains is linux, then I can keep nagging for whatever else is missing.

bundling the php code with different executables for different operating systems could be automated on a website for example

@crazywhalecc

Can you write down the exact problem with details, so I can share it around with people who may come up with a solution?

Is your problem that your solution imposes requirements on the system environment?

Then can you for example make one that works for me for example?
Can you make one that works for latest Mint users?
or one for latest Ubuntu users?

@crazywhalecc

also: so this is a linux / opengl problem, correct? not a php problem ?

Exactly. php-glfw extension and php itself can be easily statically compiled. Many of the extensions I completed before that took a lot of time to implement were also due to this: static compilation of dependent libraries is troublesome.

Compiling mesa3d is another big problem. It uses meson for building, which I'm not very familiar with.

For now I have a question: Do you need just a standalone php file or a php binary distribution that is portable to almost any Linux?

With glfw I found that writing 3d games can be incredibly easy,
I would like to be able to distribute it to others without having them install the glfw library or php (if they dont have it already), also there is the problem of having correct version of php, these would all hinder easy distribution.

For starters, I would like a binary that can run on linux mint, my distro.
but main thing is the glfw part, can it be included for mint?

I also have an idea for making apps in php, in Android.
Can you make binaries for android?
if yes I will explain more.

Do you have an email address?

I understand. It doesn't sound like a scenario that completely requires static compilation. What is more needed is a system-level PHP migration solution. This idea I mentioned in#58 is basically to build a standalone PHP binary that can rely on some system libraries.

But unfortunately, even so, trying to statically link these huge system-level underlying UI libraries is tantamount to packaging half of the operating system into a PHP binary, which is very unrealistic. If you want to implement transplantation to different platforms or distributions, there is an idea to consider: making a PHP distribution just like making.deb software. When you publish, you can write automatic build processes for multiple distributions and use them by different people. You need to download different versions of php files.

In short:

If your main consideration is binary portability, all cases that rely on static compilation are the most convenient for portability, but some libraries (such as X11, mesa3d, OpenGL, etc. that glfw depends on) are almost difficult to compile statically. If you are only running under a specific distribution (for example, only Ubuntu with the Xorg desktop environment), then you can compile it under Ubuntu in the same environment, and then distribute the php binary with glfw and let it use the system's dynamic library.