No FreeType support in PHP 8.1 on Amazon Linux 2 / Elastic Beanstalk?

Question

I have an Elastic Beanstalk app running on PHP 8.1. However, there is no FreeType support, even though I have both GD and libfreetype installed on the EC2 instances. All of the instructions I can find on the web say you have to recompile PHP with FreeType (--with-freetype) in order to turn it on. Obviously, I don't want to have an unsupported, hand-built PHP installation on EB if I can avoid it. That's the whole point of Elastic Beanstalk.

Can anyone tell me how to add GD with FreeType support on PHP 8.1 on Amazon Linux 2 without having to recompile? Or, can anyone from AWS make sure it gets added to the EB images? This is a major missing feature. Thanks.

Accepted Answer

Looks like AWS fixed this in Beanstalk platform v3.4.1
```
php --version
PHP 8.1.9 (cli) (built: Aug 23 2022 21:25:19) (ZTS)

php -i | grep -E "GD|FreeType"
GD Support => enabled
GD Version => bundled (2.1.0 compatible)
FreeType Support => enabled
FreeType Linkage => with freetype
FreeType Version => 2.8.0
```
PS: They also added my "pcntl" support I mentioned was missing

Answer

This isn't a complete answer (only AWS can fix that in php).  But, there may be a work-around for you.  The php 8.0 in Beanstalk does have GD and FreeType included:
```
php -i | grep -E "GD|FreeType"
GD Support => enabled
GD Version => bundled (2.1.0 compatible)
FreeType Support => enabled
FreeType Linkage => with freetype
FreeType Version => 2.8.0
```
I posted a comment 5 days ago that php 8.1 was also missing "pcntl" support.  It had been supported in prior php versions in Beanstalk.  Looks like the AWS team significantly changed the php options in 8.1.  I never saw any docs about these breaking changes.

Answer

+1

We also need AWS to add this flag added to next version of PHP 8.1 in EB.  Doesn't seem possible to replace the bundled GD so I'm having to recompile all of PHP when deploying (which of course isn't efficient)

Many thanks!

Answer

Wow! They actually fixed it. I see it enabled on mine which auto-updated. Thank you, AWS!

No FreeType support in PHP 8.1 on Amazon Linux 2 / Elastic Beanstalk?

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