This is a possible approach to deploying embed with some php code embedded for main(), we don't have to require any special deps, or really make significant changes.

Options:

• --with-embed-main takes path to php/phar file
• --with-embed-link takes path for symlink creation (phar requires a symlink with the same name as the archive when it was created)

Possible improvements:

• sigint (cleanup properly)
• determine link name automagically
• add ability to set hardcoded ini
• do less nasty things in config.m4, formalize in makefile
• set name of executable

Tested widely enough to make sure phar archives work, obvious this is very nix focused, I've no idea how to do this in a windows friendly way.

Example:

--with-embed-main=/path/to/pie.phar --with-embed-link=pie.phar creates:

krakjoe@fiji:/opt/src/php-src$ /opt/bin/php-embed-main build apcu/apcu
#!/usr/bin/env php
🥧 PHP Installer for Extensions (PIE) 1.2.0, from The PHP Foundation
You are running PHP 8.5.0-dev
Target PHP installation: 8.5.0-dev ts, on Linux/OSX/etc x86_64 (from /opt/bin/php)
Found package: apcu/apcu:v5.1.27 which provides ext-apcu
Extracted apcu/apcu:v5.1.27 source to: /home/krakjoe/.config/pie/php8.5_36ea40acb359a0ef916e847e11dafbd9/vendor/apcu/apcu
phpize complete.
Configure complete.
Running make without parallelization - try providing -jN to PIE where N is the number of cores you have.
Build complete: /home/krakjoe/.config/pie/php8.5_36ea40acb359a0ef916e847e11dafbd9/vendor/apcu/apcu/modules/apcu.so