civicrm/civix

CiviCRM Extension CLI

v26.02.0 2026-02-13 08:11 UTC

Requires

• php: >=7.4.0
• civicrm/composer-compile-plugin: ~0.18
• civicrm/composer-downloads-plugin: ~2.1|^3
• civicrm/cv-lib: ~0.3.66
• civicrm/php-array-doc: ~1.0.0
• symfony/console: ^4|^5
• symfony/filesystem: ^4|^5
• symfony/process: ^4|^5
• symfony/templating: ^4|^5
• symfony/var-dumper: ^4|^5
• symfony/var-exporter: ^4.4|^5
• totten/license-data: dev-master
• totten/process-helper: ^1.0.1
• webmozart/glob: ^4.7

AGPL-3.0

• Tim Otten

README

Civix is a command-line tool for building CiviCRM extensions. It is distributed as part of CiviCRM-Buildkit.

Requirements

• PHP 7.4+
• CiviCRM 5.x (Recommended: any release from the prior 12 months)
• (For MAMP, WAMP, XAMPP, etc) PHP command-line configuration (http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Setup+Command-Line+PHP)
• (For CentOS/RHEL) Compatible version of libxml2 (#19)

Download

civix is distributed in PHAR format, which is a portable executable file (for PHP). It should run on most Unix-like systems where PHP is installed. Here are three quick ways to download it:

• Download the latest release of civix.phar (SHA256, GPG) and put it in the PATH. For example:

  sudo curl -LsS https://download.civicrm.org/civix/civix.phar -o /usr/local/bin/civix
  sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/civix

  (Learn more: Install civix.phar as system-wide tool (Linux/BSD/macOS))

• Or... add civix and other CiviCRM tools to a composer project (Drupal 9/10/11)

  composer require civicrm/cli-tools

  (Learn more: Install civix.phar as project tool (composer))

• Or... use phar.io's phive installer to download, validate, and cache the civix.phar file.

  phive install totten/civix

  (Learn more: Install civix.phar as project tool (phive))

There are several more options for downloading civix. See also:

• Download URLs for alternate versions
• Comparison of install options
• Install civix as a system-wide/standalone tool
  • 🟢 Install civix.phar (binary) as system-wide tool (Linux/BSD/macOS)
  • 🟡 Install civix.git (source) as standalone project (Linux/BSD/macOS)
  • 🟡 Install civix.git (source) as standalone project (Windows)
• Install civix as a tool within another project
  • 🟢 Install civix.phar (binary) as project tool (composer)
  • 🟢 Install civix.phar (binary) as project tool (phive)
  • 🟡 Install civix.git (source) as project tool (composer)

(🟢=Binary installs are generally recommended. 🟡=Source installs may require extra attention to local compatibility.)

Documentation

The CiviCRM Developer Guide includes tutorials for building extensions

For reference documentation, civix supports a "--help" option. For example, to get reference materials about the "generate:page" command, run:

civix generate:page --help

Development

If you are developing updates for civix.git, then see doc/develop.md. It discusses PHAR compilation, unit tests, and similar processes.