PHP with SOAP Enabled

[Michael Fever]

I need PHP to have SOAP enabled.
I downloaded latest PHP sources and ran
./configure --enable-soap=shared

which returned this error:
no acceptable cc found in $PATH

So there is no cc or gcc compiler available. At this point I stopped.

How can I install/enable SOAP for my PHP installation?

I am not opposed to a 2nd php installation which responds to .php5 extensions. This is how the previous provider has it setup.

Should I go ahead and install the gcc or cc compiler then reinstall php or is there a better way to do this?

Thanks in advance.