The lack of a libxml2 to build against is a major problem with choco only windows. Lots of software needs this. I am facing it because I want python ‘lxml’ to build, and it also needs the headers and .lib files, etc.
There is a nice trick to use the xsltproc package which includes the libxml2 headers and built libraries; see libxml2/libxslt package · Issue #33 · metanorma/chocolatey-metanorma · GitHub . I then ran into a problem of the linker missing a few stdlib symbols, and the python/lxml build wrappers didnt let me easily change which vcdist to link against so I put that on hold. But the approach that metanorma used should work most of the time, especially if you have control over the compiler and linker flags.
Regarding refreshenv, see RefreshEnv for bash - #2 by jayvdb for a hack at getting refreshenv working.
On the topic of php choco , the php choco does a bit of fiddling after the install to create a basic php.ini, however I found quite a bit more work was needed to get to a sane php, especially for older php versions in choco.
You can see the post-install steps done by the most recent versions of the php package at https://github.com/chocolatey-community/chocolatey-coreteampackages/blob/master/automatic/php/tools/chocolateyInstall.ps1
My fixup script for php also installs pear from the phar , as that seems impossible to do with pear components inside the php package from choco. Here is a recent version of it :
Even if you dont need to use PEAR, doing a PEAR sync is a simple way to check that the php SSL is working correctly.