Resolving Missing PHP and OpenSSL Header Files When Installing Swoole on macOS

The author shares a detailed troubleshooting guide for installing the Swoole PHP extension on a macOS machine that uses the built‑in PHP 7.3 and the MxSrvs development environment.

Two main issues are encountered: the system cannot locate PHP header files and cannot find OpenSSL header files, both caused by the macOS default PHP lacking the necessary development files.

Preparation steps include ensuring autoconf ≥ 2.68, downloading the Swoole source from Git, and confirming the local environment (Xcode not installed, PHP 7.3 present).

To compile, the author runs the following commands inside the MxSrvs PHP directory:

/Applications/MxSrvs/bin/php/bin/phpize

./configure \--enable-openssl \--enable-http2

make && sudo make install

The first problem is solved by adding the tool’s PHP binary path to the system environment via source ~/.bash_profile (or adding the same line to ~/.zshrc) so that the required header files become reachable.

For the OpenSSL issue, the author installs OpenSSL with Homebrew: brew install openssl If OpenSSL is already present, it can be reinstalled with: brew reinstall [email protected] Then the PATH is updated by appending the following line to ~/.zshrc:

export PATH="/usr/local/opt/[email protected]/bin:$PATH"

Finally, the missing OpenSSL headers are copied from the Homebrew Cellar to the Xcode SDK include directory:

/usr/local/Cellar/[email protected]/1.1.1h/include/openssl → /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/

After these adjustments, the second issue is resolved, and the Swoole extension compiles successfully, as shown by the final screenshots.