After posting how I compiled Xdebug PHP extension on Windows I got an interesting comment how I can improve the process.

The comment came again from Christoph on Twitter:

Great!

If you'd need bison etc., you can fetch https://t.co/058sby3fSg, and use phpsdk-vs16-x64.bat instead of the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019.

— Christoph M. Becker (@cmbecker69) August 17, 2021

I wasn’t aware of this precomputed SDK from Microsoft. Here is the link: https://github.com/microsoft/php-sdk-binary-tools

My final setup is as follows: In one folder clone or download

1. https://github.com/microsoft/php-sdk-binary-tools
2. Development package from https://windows.php.net/qa/
3. The extension: https://github.com/xdebug/xdebug.git

php-8.1.0beta2-devel-vs16-x64
php-sdk-binary-tools
xdebug

Go to your the php-sdk-binary-tools and run the appropriate init script. In my case: phpsdk-vs16-x64.bat.

c:\php\php-sdk-binary-tools>phpsdk-vs16-x64.bat
[vcvarsall.bat] Environment initialized for: 'x64'

PHP SDK 2.2.1-dev

OS architecture:    64-bit
Build architecture: 64-bit
Visual C++:         14.29.30133.0
PHP-SDK path:       c:\php\php-sdk-binary-tools

Go to your extension folder and relatively run phpize.

c:\php>cd xdebug

c:\php\xdebug>..\php-8.1.0beta2-devel-vs16-x64\phpize.bat
Rebuilding configure.js
c:\php\php-8.1.0beta2-devel-vs16-x64
module ...
Now run 'configure --help'

Then configure.bat --with-xdebug and nmake.