Phalanger (compiler)

Phalanger is a project which was started at Charles University in Prague and was supported by Microsoft. It compiles source code written in the PHP scripting language into CIL byte-code. It handles the beginning of a compiling process which is completed by the JIT compiler component of the .NET Framework. It does not address native code generation nor optimization. Its purpose is to compile PHP scripts into .NET assemblies, logical units containing CIL code and meta-data.

Compatibility

Phalanger can run real-world PHP applications, many with minor to no modifications. Examples include WordPress,^[1] MediaWiki,^[2] phpMyAdmin and phpBB.^[3]

Performance

One of the main goals of the project is to improve performance of PHP applications on Windows. The project web page claims considerable performance benefits over a 32-bit Windows version of PHP.^[4]

There was a project^[5] at Charles University to re-implement the Phalanger core using the Microsoft Dynamic Language Runtime, and to develop a Visual Studio integration tool to provide IntelliSense for the PHP language.

Though some features from DLR would slow down the performance of Phalanger^{[citation needed]}, they do claim performance gains by a factor of 6.^[6] These features are being integrated into current Phalanger core.

Pure Mode

Pure Mode in Phalanger allows the user to take the binaries out of the source and use edit Windows configuration files themselves. This allows you to export Phalanger to be used on systems where you do not necessarily want Phalanger to be installed. As of Version 3.0 of Phalanger running in Pure Mode may still require some run-time compiling but will drastically reduce the amount of time that the pages will load the first time that they are used.

Google Summer of Code

A project involving Phalanger was mentored by the Mono team during the Google Summer of Code program in 2008. During this period Phalanger was ported to the Silverlight 2.0 framework with the goal of making it work on Moonlight as well.^[7]

Jadu sponsorship

Early in 2008, UK Content Management vendor Jadu partnered with the Prague-based team to improve communication between .NET and the Phalanger compiler. It is based on duck typing and provides a way for accessing objects from the dynamic PHP world that lack compile-time type information from a statically typed language in a .NET environment in a type-safe way.^[8]

In December 2008, Jadu announced that it has made the compiler available to the developer community and in interviews with ITPRO^[9] and VNUnet^[10] said that the development would help close the skills gap between PHP and .NET.

Devsense support & development

Since 2009, DEVSENSE company leads the development of the project and offers commercial support.^[11] DEVSENSE consists of core Phalanger developers and keeps this open-source project alive.

In addition to maintenance and growth of the project, Devsense is providing Visual Studio integration of Phalanger for the community.^[12]

Since 2012, DEVSENSE provides support forum^[13] for Phalanger (compiler) and related projects for the community.

References

External links

• Phalanger PHP compiler blog
• Phalanger discussion forum
• Phalanger commercial support
• Wiki site for Phalanger PHP compiler
• Phalanger source control and issue tracker
• Official Web Page for previous version 1.0
• eWeek article about Phalanger
• Microsoft accommodates dynamic languages (article)
• Channel 9 Phalanger