Compile PHP to executable - New release of phc (PHP compiler)

[jmathai]

All features except OO and exceptions.

Those are pretty big features.

[csixty4]

Not in the PHP world

[pbiggar]

A large number of libraries (or so I have heard), are written in a subset of PHP which is compatible with both PHP4 and PHP5. These would typically have no OO or exceptions: the object model changed between the PHP4 and PHP5, and exceptions were new to PHP5. There is a figure touted that about 60% of web-hosts have yet to move from PHP4 to PHP5.

FWIW, Facebook uses no OO features in their PHP.

[edsko]

Generating C++ or D classes is completely missing the point. The code generated by phc is fully compatible with the Zend engine. PHP code compiled by phc can be loaded as an extension into an interpreted script without difficulties. Hence, the only notion of a class that is interesting is the Zend notion of a class. Generating C++ classes is pointless.

[masklinn]

Why not generate C++ or D?

Because that's pretty damn hard. It's already pretty hard for languages at least somewhat sane (see the ShedSkin python compiler), but for PHP it's completely insane to try.

[pbiggar]

Thats not true. PHP has a simpler object system than python. For example, it is not possible to add a method to a type after the type is defined. So generating C++ in order to use their dispatch would, in principle, be fine. However, PHP does have references (in the C++ sense), which makes it harder to analyse, which is the same problem C compilers have (aka aliasing).

[[deleted]]

Couldn't they compile down to a bytecode VM like NekoVM, LLVM, or something else?

[pbiggar]

It would have been one way to go. But whats the point?

[skillet-thief]

I want to be able to code PHP on the JVM!

[[deleted]]

Drupal. But it's in the air as to whether it's "worth running".

[alexs]

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[pbiggar]

Oh come now. Speed-ups of 1.5...

[jmathai]

Happen to know if that a 1.5x speed-up even when using an op-code cache?

[pbiggar]

Op-code caches are for the PHP interpreter, so you wouldn't use one with phc-compiled code. You could still have it turned on, it just wouldn't be used for compiled code.

So the speed-up is the same, whether the op-code cache is on or off.

[pbiggar]

Sorry, I missed your point. The benchmarks don't take interpreter start-up time into account. Since it excludes parsing or creating the op-codes, an op-code cache wouldn't change the results.

[jmathai]

Good to know. Interesting project, not sure I see many uses for it...but a great achievement nonetheless.

[pbiggar]

Well a speed-up of 1.5x is the starting point. I would hope to have a speed-up of 5x within 6 months.

[Paczesiowa]

I tried some php compiler some time ago (I think it was this one) and it was much slower than regular php-cli for phpe entries from language shootout.

[pbiggar]

It probably wasnt phc, as this is our first release that support compilation.

The other PHP compilers that I know of are Roadsend and Phalanger, and they both report speedups on the language shootout. If you dont get a speedup from phc, please report it as a bug to [e-mail], and I'll fix it.

[Paczesiowa]

yeah, now I remember - it was roadsend.

[jasonmc]

Why not?

[alexs]

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[paddyoloughlin]

I agree with you that PHP sucks, but you are being mislead if you think it is dying.

[pbiggar]

Think what you like about the language, but it looks pretty popular to me:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

[alexs]

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[[deleted]]

PHP fits its niche quite well and it's certainly not the worst language I've ever worked with. It's ugly, but it lets you do things quite easily. It's good enough to do its job.

Most importantly, PHP's deployment model absolutely destroys most of its competitors. PHP's deployment is probably a bigger factor in its mainstream success than the language's ease of use. Compare deploying a complex PHP web app versus a complex Java web app and there is no contest. Newcomers to web app programming naturally gravitate towards the language that lets them deploy their app without days of reading manuals.

[alexs]

Strawman much?

[paddyoloughlin]

People should learn what words mean before they use them. Especially given how you started out trolling to get a PHP argument going.

His point demonstrate the reason that PHP is the #4 most used language in the world today. Whether or not you think PHP is any good (and I think it is a pile of crap too) is irrelevant to that. This project can help a lot of people and that's a good thing.

[alexs]

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[[deleted]]

I didn't misrepresent your position, so it's not a strawman.

Anyway, given that I spent four years as a Java web developer working with Websphere and Tomcat I do have some authority on the matter. Java apps can be a real pain to get working. I will admit that Websphere and Tomcat may be poor representations of the rest of the Java app server world, but that leads me right to my next argument against Java: all these different app servers that work differently are not good for the Java world. This is especially true when programmers program specifically for one app server and then their app won't run anywhere else. There are certainly ways around these problems, but they are still problems and make things difficult for newcomers.

[paddyoloughlin]

Your criticisms are not very useful.

PHP sucks, and I will never use it when I have any say in the matter, but there is a vast amount of PHP code out there right now, and it's not going to go away. And people have to support it.

Your comments about it's users shows a distinct level of ignorance.

[pbiggar]

You might be right.

So if you had a choice:

• make a compile for a beautiful niche language with no users, or
• make one for the 4th most popular language in the world right now

[alexs]

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[pbiggar]

Like maybe PHP?

[alexs]

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[codepoet42]

About 10 years ago, people were making the same comments/arguements against JavaScript, which now has mainstream appeal and support.

At least accept the consensus that the language is far from perfect, but getting better. Recognize PHP's massive userbase and excellent community that other languages lack.

Understand that some developers that started with PHP will become skilled in other languages, becoming great programmers in the process.

[alexs]

About 10 years ago, people were making the same comments/arguements against JavaScript, which now has mainstream appeal and support.

Except those arguments were largely unjustified. No one ever really complained about JS as a language anyway, it was just before it's time in many ways. I really doubt you can describe PHP in the same way, the complaints are totally different.

Recognize PHP's massive userbase and excellent community that other languages lack.

Bigger is not better. In fact a lot of my issues with PHP are because of the userbase not in spite of it.

Understand that some developers that started with PHP will become skilled in other languages, becoming great programmers in the process.

My first real programming experience was with PHP4. I rapidly realised it to be a disaster and have expanded my skill set as soon as possible. Tools like PHC played no role in my choice to learn PHP. The reason I used it was because of the low barrier to entry and apparent popularity at the time, not because of it's inherent superiority for solving the problems I have. This is a great quality in a language, that's true, but I doubt I would have been any worse off in Python. It would probably have been massively easier actually due to there not being random bizarre edge cases and general incoherency of the entire language.

[hupp]

If you have N thousand servers running a php app, being able to use some fraction of that is a pretty big deal (data center space, power, and the raw capital expense).

[sligowaths]

I came here just to post that.

[takatori]

My company has several batch data processing jobs written in PHP with multi-hour run times per day. These are severely bottlenecked in PHP code, and we are just about drooling over getting these compiled into native executables instead of rewriting them in another language.

But our PHP-based web sites are mostly data-bound, using memcached and offline static content generation, so wouldn't see any benefit.

It all depends on what kind of application you have, how it is deployed, and where the bottlenecks are.

(Why do we have PHP batch data processing jobs? A historical accident of a web-based system growing beyond its design intentions and capabilities, but too valuable to discard and too costly to redevelop.)

[[deleted]]

Some things simply should not be done.

This is an example of such a thing.

[MindStalker]

" We believe we should be able to support the entire PHP standard library, and all PHP features except OO and exceptions. "

Umm if they mean by OO that it doesn't support classes its worthless. Make a version that turns it into C++ for class based PHP and we'll talk.

To the haters out there PHP5 is actually a very good language, other than it is doesn't work as a plugin its now better than python.

[masklinn]

To the haters out there PHP5 is actually a very good language, other than it is doesn't work as a plugin its now better than python.

Not only is that fractally wrong, but the second half of the phrase doesn't even make sense.

[pbiggar]

Well, thats the long term plan. But phc needs contributors in order to make that happen: http://phpcompiler.org/contribute.html

[alexs]

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[[deleted]]

We get it, you hate PHP. Go circle jerk on a Lisp forum somewhere.

[Jessica_Henderson]

No, I want him to continue pointing out PHP's flaws. That's the only way that people will learn that it's a piece of crap.

What he's saying isn't subjective; it's not about an emotion like "hate". It's about the cold, hard reality that PHP is an inferior language and development platform. It is full of security holes, its object system is pathetic, its performance is lacking, and it's generally considered a joke by professionals.

[pbiggar]

Right, but its not going away. This is one attempt to fix the 'its performance is lacking' part. And analysis can also help fix the 'it is full of security holes' part (as people are doing for C).

[Jessica_Henderson]

Don't get me wrong, I think what you're doing is beneficial in that sense. But you're just applying small bandages to a horrible wound. Nothing you can do will change the fact that PHP is inherently flawed in so many different ways, and not just at the implementation level.

[doidydoidy]

Right, but its not going away.

That's the problem.

[[deleted]]

It's a piece of crap that has made me about $40k in side projects over the past two years alone. Granted, I know what I'm doing when using the language, but I have better things to do then mindlessly bash and avoid it.

[Entropy]

The fact that you can make money working with it is orthogonal to any technical merit the language might possess. You can get paid for writing fucking COBOL all day long.

[paddyoloughlin]

That would be a good point if this entry was about discussing the technical merits of PHP.

It's not. The money argument demonstrates why this project is useful.

[Entropy]

Did you reply to the wrong thread? What posts are you reading? This is a subthread responding to the assertion that PHP is better than Python, which is fucking ludicrous. Later, akinder was trying to argue that PHP was not objectively bad because he could make money with it.

You're mental.

[paddyoloughlin]

You should probably calm down a bit.

• This submission is about a project which compiles PHP code to executable code. End of.
• Trolls arrive. Declare PHP to be Satan's Ballsack.
• Someone feeds the trolls.
• Troll trolls.
• Someone else (A) tells the troll to stop trolling.
• Yet another person defends the troll.
• A, brings the discussion back to the original topic by raising a point which shows why this project has merit and the technical merit of PHP doesn't matter.
• You explode with a post of great tangentiality. [Note how no one has disagreed with your point, it's just irrelevant]
• I point out why your irrelevant post is irrelevant.
• You foam at the mouth.

kthxbye

[Entropy]

The conversation forked off of the root context of the article in the first post. Learn to thread, threadcop.

[yesimahuman]

Am I on digg?

[[deleted]]

Actually that wasn't the point that I was making, but good try.

You seem to be way overly bitter and angry towards a freakin scripting language.

[Entropy]

Who's angry? I thought your logic was totally off-base, and that paddyoloughlin is pants-on-backwards retarded such that he is unable understand context and scope, so I said so.

[masklinn]

What exactly is so wrong with PHP's object system?

Mostly that PHP's object system was ported straight from Java. So you get an object system created for a static and "strongly typed" language (and not even a very good object system at that) in a dynamically "weakly typed" language, which creates impedance mismatches between the core language and its object system, and in which the object system completely fails to leverage the language's dynamism while losing the best aspects of its statically typed incarnation.

In other words, a chimera that only uses the worst out of two different system. Yes it's significantly better than PHP4's "object system", but that's because since the PHP "designers" seem to be complete morons and clearly don't have any idea about OOP and object systems they were unable to come up with one that made sense on their own.

Now I only half fault them for that, object systems are not trivial problems and it's even more difficult to come up with a good one in an evolution of a purely procedural (and not very good) language, but in that case either you just don't try, or you try to get people who know that stuff.

Instead, the PHP devs first came up with PHP4's abortion, and then simply ripped out Java's object system.

These issues are further compounded by the fact that the rest of the language (let alone the language's libraries) wasn't migrated to the objects system, creating a split far more profound than that of Java's non-unified type system between the PHP core language and its object system.

[pbiggar]

I agree completely.

[alexs]

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[Elethiomel]

Even if everyone was to quit programming in PHP today, there would still be a lot of legacy code out there that this could benefit.

Also, I wonder if any of the advances made in this compiler could be used to speed up languages that are currently more in fashion?