how to run phan on debian

First, go here, here and here to get an idea about how to get phan working.

For Debian8 though, I had to do a few more tricks to get it running.

If you still haven’t try php7 (shame on you!) check this guide: how to install php7 on debian8 and redhat6.

To compile phan, you will need a phpize. For some reason it couldn’t resolve the dependencies automatically so here is what you will need:

aptitude install autoconf automake autotools-dev libltdl-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc libtool shtool

than php readline and sqlite3:

aptitude install php7.0-readline php7.0-sqlite3

and finally you should be able to install:

aptitude install php7.0-dev

You can now go back to phan and you should be able to compile it (finally):

$ git clone git@github.com:nikic/php-ast.git
$ cd php-ast
$ phpize7.0
$ ./configure --enable-ast 
$ make install

This will build your ast.so, which is located (on debian8):

ls /usr/lib/php/20151012/

Now you need to configure php-cli and load your new module. Check where the all the interesting ini/conf files are:

php --ini

On Debian you probably want to check:

cd /etc/php/7.0/cli/conf.d/
echo 'extension=ast.so' > 20-ast.ini

If everything went fine (like it ever does…), you are good to go with phan install:

$ composer global require etsy/phan:dev-master

That should do the trick and you can run phan from your command line:

cd my_php_project;
phan -i -b -p `find ./ -type f -path '*.php'` > static_anal.report

And if you are lucky enough, and wont end up with segmentation fault as I did (try to run it on sub folder), you will see a lot of interesting things:

.../NeolaneController.php:72 TypeError assigning object to property but \default_neolanecontroller::proxy is array
.../ExactTarget/Et.php:258 ParamError call with 4 arg(s) to \soapvar::__construct() which only takes 0 arg(s)
.../CreateTextVersionDynamic.php:318 TypeError string passed to foreach instead of array
.../Editors/HTMLEditor.php:99 VarError Variable $element is not defined
.../Editors/DynamicEmails.php:105 TypeError arg#2(search) is \Service\Editors\stdclass but \array_key_exists() takes array
.../Editors/DynamicEmails.php:703 TypeError arg#2(subject) is string but \preg_replace_callback_array() takes array
.../Editors/DynamicEmails.php:721 TypeError arg#1(masterId) is int but \Service\Editors\dynamicemails::setmasterid() takes \Service\Editors\type defined at .../Editors/DynamicEmails.php:767
.../Editors/DynamicEmails.php:912 ParamError call with 3 arg(s) to \Service\Editors\dynamicemails::createviewrow() which only takes 2 arg(s) defined at .../Editors/DynamicEmails.php:926
.../Accounts.php:261 TypeError return \Service\type but getUsers() is declared to return array

If you want to experiment with other libraries, checkout the post from php7 analysis tools.