The PHP Development Team reports the quick accessibility of PHP 5.6.0. This new version accompanies new features, some backward incompatible changes and many enhancements.

Main features include in PHP 5.6.0 :

• Constant scalar expressions.
• Exponentiation utilizing the ** operator.
• Function and constant importing with the utilization decisive word.
• phpdbg as an intuitive coordinated debugger SAPI.
• GMP questions now bolster operator over-burdening.
• Document transfers bigger than 2 gigabytes in size are presently acknowledged.
• First we need to check the current version of PHP. To check the versio of PHP run following command:

  # php -v

  PHP 5.4.35 (cli) (built: Nov 14 2014 07:04:10)
  Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
  Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2015 Zend Technologies
  with Zend OPcache v7.0.4-dev, Copyright (c) 1999-2015, by Zend Technologies

• To upgrade php, first you must include the Webtatic EL yum repository data relating to your CentOS/RHEL variant to yum:
  For CentOS/RHEL 7:

  # rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/epel-release.rpm
  # rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

  For CentOS/RHEL 6:

  # rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el6/latest.rpm

• After installing Webtatic yum repository, you have to remove the old version of php-common package. It will also delete it dependencies packages.

  # yum remove php-common

  Sample Output:

  Dependencies Resolved

  ===================================================================================
  Package Arch Version Repository Size
  ===================================================================================
  Removing:
  php-common x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 7.0 M
  Removing for dependencies:
  php x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 9.1 M
  php-cli x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 12 M
  php-devel x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 8.1 M
  php-gd x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 665 k
  php-ldap x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 119 k
  php-mbstring x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 2.5 M
  php-mcrypt x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 86 k
  php-mysql x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 452 k
  php-pdo x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 348 k
  php-pear noarch 1:1.9.5-9.el6.remi @remi 2.0 M
  php-process x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 128 k
  php-snmp x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 107 k
  php-xml x86_64 5.4.39-1.el6.remi @remi 626 k

  Transaction Summary
  ===================================================================================
  Remove 14 Package(s)

  Installed size: 43 M

• Now we install PHP 5.5 using following command:

  # yum install -y php56w php56w-opcache php56w-xml php56w-mcrypt php56w-gd php56w-devel php56w-mysql php56w-intl php56w-mbstring

• After installing PHP 5.6, we need to restart Apache service.

  # /etc/init.d/httpd restart

  # php -v

  PHP 5.6.8 (cli) (built: Apr 17 2015 22:49:36)
  Copyright (c) 1997-2015 The PHP Group
  Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2015 Zend Technologies
  with Zend OPcache v7.0.4-dev, Copyright (c) 1999-2015, by Zend Technologies

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