The Intl Component Symfony2 - php

Question

I am deploying a symfony2 application to a server where php intl extension is not enabled. I have no say in this.
The answer to this question suggests a solution:
Possible to disable intl requirement for Symfony?
I have put the "symfony/intl": "3.0.*#dev" in my composer.json and everything updates fine. Must I do anything more to activate/enable it? In AppKernel like with bundles?
Now I get the following errors when I run check.php on deployment server:
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'ReflectionException' with message 'Extension intl does not exist' in /web/folk/eirik/030476/releases/20150528181203/app/SymfonyRequirements.php:658
Stack trace:
#0 /web/folk/eirik/030476/releases/20150528181203/app/SymfonyRequirements.php(658): ReflectionExtension->__construct('intl')
#1 /web/folk/eirik/030476/releases/20150528181203/app/check.php(6): SymfonyRequirements->__construct()
#2 {main}
thrown in /web/folk/eirik/030476/releases/20150528181203/app/SymfonyRequirements.php on line 658
I look at line 658 in SymfonyRequirements.php and find:
if (class_exists('Locale')) {
if (defined('INTL_ICU_VERSION')) {
$version = INTL_ICU_VERSION;
} else {
$reflector = new ReflectionExtension('intl');
ob_start();
$reflector->info();
$output = strip_tags(ob_get_clean());
preg_match('/^ICU version +(?:=> )?(.*)$/m', $output, $matches);
$version = $matches[1];
}
$this->addRecommendation(
version_compare($version, '4.0', '>='),
'intl ICU version should be at least 4+',
'Upgrade your <strong>intl</strong> extension with a newer ICU version (4+).'
);
}
I don't know much about this stuff, but I assume
new ReflectionExtension('intl') requires the intl exension to be enabled in php, which is no option for me.
But what is INTL_ICU_VERSION? And why is it not defined? And why won't the symfony/intl component fix this for me?
And btw
if (class_exists('Collator')) {
$this->addRecommendation(
null !== new Collator('FR_fr'),
'intl extension should be correctly configured',
'The intl extension does not behave properly. This problem is typical on PHP 5.3.X x64 WIN builds.'
);
}
I have also changed 'FR_fr' to 'en' here, this was an error given by check.php that disappeared when I made the change.

Answer 1

If you take a look into the file check.php you are running you'll see that it does not load the Composer autoloader therefore it makes no difference whether you have installed that Symfony Intl component or not, it'll keep failing because it's looking for a required extension that is not there. The SO question you linked does mention the problem got solved but it doesn't say that the check passed.
If that extension was your problem with your Symfony installation and the only locale you needed is "en" than the problem should have gone away already after you installed the Symfony Intl drop in replacement. Although if you want to run the check for other problems you can comment out those lines so the script can finish. Don't worry that script is totally decoupled from the framework, you can even delete it when you are done.
If you are using Capistrano for the deployment and you are running those checks on every deployment you might want to disable that as well, or customise that script for your needs.