Which version do I choose?

IIS

If you are using PHP as FastCGI with IIS you should use the Non-Thread Safe (NTS) versions of PHP.

Apache

Please use the Apache builds provided by Apache Lounge. They provide VC15 and VS16 builds of Apache for x86 and x64. We use their binaries to build the Apache SAPIs.

With Apache, using the apache2handler SAPI, you have to use the Thread Safe (TS) versions of PHP.

VC15 & VS16

More recent versions of PHP are built with VC15 or VS16 (Visual Studio 2017 or 2019 compiler respectively) and include improvements in performance and stability.

- The VC15 and VS16 builds require to have the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015-2019 x64 or x86 installed

TS and NTS

TS refers to multithread capable builds. NTS refers to single thread only builds. Use case for TS binaries involves interaction with a multithreaded SAPI and PHP loaded as a module into a web server. For NTS binaries the widespread use case is interaction with a web server through the FastCGI protocol, utilizing no multithreading (but also for example CLI).

What is PGO?

Profile Guided Optimization is an optimization feature available in Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler that allows you to optimize an output file based on profiling data collected during test runs of the application or module.

Links:

amd64 (x86_64) Builds

PHP 7 provides full 64-bit support. The x64 builds of PHP 7 support native 64-bit integers, LFS, 64-bit memory_limit and much more.

Long and multibyte path

PHP 7.1+ supports long and UTF-8 paths. See the manual for details.