YiiPress Documentation

Binaries, PHAR, Docker

YiiPress can be packaged as reproducible artifacts:

make package

The command builds the Linux static executable and writes it to dist/linux-amd64/:

  • yiipress — static Linux executable built with static-php-cli micro SAPI and the YiiPress PHAR embedded.

Additional package targets are available:

make package-phar
make package-linux
make package-macos
make package-windows
make package-distroless
make package-distroless-push
  • make package-linux is the explicit Linux static executable target. Set PACKAGE_PLATFORM=linux/amd64 and PACKAGE_LINUX_DIST=... to override the defaults.
  • make package-macos builds the native macOS static executable into dist/macos-<arch>/yiipress with the shell packaging script. It is intended for macOS hosts with PHP, Composer, Rust, and the Xcode command-line build toolchain available. PACKAGE_MACOS_ARCH must match the host architecture (arm64 or amd64); set PACKAGE_MACOS_DIST=... to override the output directory. The intermediate PHAR used by static-php-cli is kept under runtime/package-macos/ and is not part of the macOS artifact.
  • make package-windows builds only dist/windows-amd64/yiipress.exe with the PowerShell packaging script. It is intended for Windows hosts with PowerShell 7 (pwsh), PHP, Composer, Rust, and the Visual Studio C++ toolchain available. The intermediate PHAR used by static-php-cli is kept under runtime/package-windows/ and is not part of the Windows artifact.
  • make package-phar builds dist/phar/yiipress.phar separately for environments that already have PHP 8.5 and required extensions. Set PACKAGE_PHAR_DIST=... to override the output directory.
  • make package-distroless builds a local ${IMAGE}-static:${IMAGE_TAG} image from the distroless Docker target. The image copies only the static yiipress binary into a distroless base and runs it as the entrypoint.
  • make package-distroless-push builds and pushes the same image.

Dockerfiles

docker/Dockerfile is the source build Dockerfile. It contains development and production image targets, PHAR packaging targets, and the expensive static-php-cli Linux binary build targets used by make package* and CI packaging jobs.

docker/Dockerfile.distroless-binary is the final image assembly Dockerfile for GitHub Actions. It does not build PHP, Composer dependencies, the PHAR, or static-php-cli. It copies an already-built dist/linux-amd64/yiipress binary into the distroless base image, so nightly and release container images reuse the Linux binary artifact instead of rebuilding it.

The PHAR builder copies only runtime inputs into the build stage: config/, public/, src/, themes/, yii, Composer metadata, and the PHAR build scripts. Dependencies are installed with --no-dev inside that stage before the PHAR is assembled.

PHPDoc comments are stripped from packaged PHP files to keep the standalone PHAR and embedded static-binary PHAR smaller while preserving runtime comments, code, and dependency PHPDoc that is read through reflection at runtime. Benchmark fixture helpers, Composer's installed.json, VCS placeholders, and non-runtime type stubs are omitted because packaged commands do not need them.
Packaged PHAR entries are gzip-compressed before the archive is finalized. The static binary appends that same PHAR to the micro SAPI executable, so PHAR compression reduces both the standalone PHAR and the Linux, macOS, and Windows static executables.
The static executable includes ext-highlighter, so syntax highlighting does not need FFI or an external shared library. serve uses ReactPHP stream sockets with preforked worker processes, serves built files and live reload SSE in the server loop, keeps one shared live reload watcher per worker, and does not require PHP's native sockets extension.
Relative content-dir, output-dir, new, clean, serve, and import paths are resolved from the directory where you run yiipress, not from the packaged executable location.
PHAR and static binary runs keep build cache and incremental manifests under the OS temp directory, keyed by the current project directory, instead of writing to runtime/ in the site checkout. yiipress clean removes that packaged cache as well as the configured output directory.

GitHub Actions builds the same outputs in the Package Static Builds workflow. Commits to master publish separate nightly PHAR, Linux, macOS, and Windows workflow artifacts, create immutable GitHub prereleases tagged as nightly-<run>-<attempt>-<sha> with the Linux binary and checksums, and push the distroless image as ghcr.io/<owner>/<repo>-static:nightly plus a commit-specific nightly-<sha> tag. The reusable build action resolves version: nightly to the newest matching nightly prerelease.

Version tags run the Release workflow. It builds the PHAR, Linux, macOS, and Windows binaries, pushes only the binary-based distroless image as ghcr.io/<owner>/<repo>-static:<tag> plus semver aliases, then creates a draft GitHub release, attaches all binaries and SHA256SUMS, writes release notes from commits with their authors, and publishes the release. The Linux binary and PHAR come from the same static-package build, and the release image is assembled from the Linux binary artifact, so the expensive packaging build is not repeated for those outputs.