On the Zend Developer Zone a new tutorial has been posted showing how to compile PHP extensions to work with the Zend Server web platform.

To date, Zend Server includes 77 PHP extensions that Zend considers essential or just very helpful for most PHP developers. Still, what if the one that your code uses is not among them? Or you wish to compile one of the extensions Zend Server is shipped with in a different way (against your own libraries or to support additional, less common features)? If this scenario sounds familiar to you, you may find this tutorial useful.

You'll need to know a bit about compiling and some of the tools (like autoconf, automake, the gcc compiler, and libtool) before you get started. Two scenarios are described - one for installing and compiling the Newt extension (RedHat's Newt New Terminal library) and another slightly less automated for the Pspell extension.

Each of these examples make a shared module that can be included into the PHP installation via your php.ini.