GHCup vs PHPBrew

GHCup is a free, open-source installer and version manager for the Haskell toolchain. It installs and manages GHC, cabal-install, Haskell Language Server (HLS), and Stack versions; Stack can also be configured to use GHC versions managed by GHCup. Listed functionality includes a terminal user interface and GHC cross-compilation. Installation guidance covers terminal commands for Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and WSL2, alongside PowerShell instructions for Windows. The project describes Windows support as being in an early stage and uses a shim wrapper because Windows does not properly support symbolic links. On macOS, GHCup may prompt for command line tools; Windows setup includes msys2. The installer should be run as a non-root user on Unix-like systems and a non-admin user on Windows. GHCup relies on precompiled binaries, so compatibility can depend on the distribution and libraries such as libtinfo. WSL1 and macOS versions earlier than 10.13 are unsupported. Some ARM binaries are experimental: Stack and HLS on Linux ARM, and HLS bindists on macOS aarch64. Configuration can be stored in ~/.ghcup/config.yaml, with command-line options taking precedence.

PHPBrew builds and installs multiple PHP versions in a user’s home directory, including without root permission. It is intended for Linux and macOS and compiles PHP from source. Build variants simplify configuration choices such as PDO, MySQL, SQLite, and debug support. Users can temporarily select a version or change the default, with bash and zsh integration for switching and project version pinning. PHPBrew installs extensions from PHP source or PECL and can create configuration to enable them. It can compile Apache PHP modules and provides PHP-FPM management commands when PHP is built with the +fpm variant. Library lookup can use Homebrew, MacPorts, Debian, Ubuntu, or a custom path. Development packages must be installed before building. The project uses the MIT license and directs users to troubleshooting and wiki documentation. Builds of PHP versions no longer officially supported are not guaranteed, and issues involving versions older than 5.4 will not be fixed. The listed plan costs nothing.