Roadsend PHP
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Roadsend PHP is an open source implementation of the PHP language. It includes an interpreter, native compiler, and step debugger . Roadsend Compiler can be used to build online web applications with FastCGI, offline web applications with an embedded web server (using the included "MicroServer"), desktop GUI applications with PHP-GTK, libraries, and console applications. It is known to build on Linux, Windows (using mingw), and FreeBSD. The Roadsend IDE is available for Windows.
Originally developed by Roadsend Inc., it has been in development since 2002, and was released as an open source project in 2007.
The Roadsend PHP compiler is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The Roadsend PHP runtime environment and extension libraries are available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License.
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[edit] Relation To Zend PHP
Roadsend PHP is a completely independent implementation of the PHP language and runtime environment, and is not based on the original implementation (using the Zend Engine). "Zend PHP" is not required, and is not used in any way, by Roadsend PHP. Roadsend is implemented in bigloo scheme and C.
[edit] Native Compilation
Roadsend PHP compiler is unique among PHP "compilers" because it is not a byte code compiler, script encoder, or embedder. It compiles PHP source code to native machine code. It achieves this by compiling to bigloo scheme, which in turn is compiled to C, then to machine code. The entire process is completely integrated and transparent to the end user.
In addition to compiling, Roadsend PHP can also interpret PHP source directly.
[edit] Compatibility
Roadsend PHP aims to be syntactically and semantically compatible with Zend PHP whenever possible. The current version is compatible with PHP 4. PHP 5 compatibility is under development, with some support available in the latest source release.
Only a small subset of the current Zend PHP extensions are currently implemented. These include:
- Standard Library
- PCRE
- MySQL
- XML (libXML 2 based)
- SQLite 3
- ODBC
- CURL
- pcc-win (a custom, windows only extension with access to the windows API)
- PHP-GTK 1
- PHP-GTK 2 (in development)
[edit] State of Functionality
Even with the smaller subset of extensions and only basic PHP 5 support, Roadsend PHP is sophisticated enough to compile and run many popular PHP 4 packages such as phpBB and phpMyAdmin. For example, the Roadsend Support Forums run a compiled version of phpBB through FastCGI.
