recompiling php 5. is it realy necessary??

[Amzul]

hello all,
i hope its the right place to post my Q.

we are useing freebsd 6.1
apache ver 2.2
php 5

i made a script that needs to use GregorianToJD() function.

when first configure php, we didnt enable calendar.
i looked around and saw that to use it its a must.
php documentation
and i found more links about how to configure and make php5 on freebsd.
link 1
link 2

it dosnet look that hard, but still i dont want to mess up somthing that allready working and very importent that it will still be working.

so is there another way to enable caledar?
or is the easiest way in this case is to find out another way to calculate dates.
thanks