v0.1.1

This release adds examples and rewrites the README. The library and the CLI work exactly as in v0.1.0.

What changed

Area	Change
Examples	A new module with three runnable examples. See below.
README	Usage comes first: as a library, then as a tool. A full reference follows it.

Examples

Example	What it shows
fibonacci	PHP calls a Go function through Options.Functions. It compares recursive Fibonacci in Go and in PHP. Go is about 90 times faster at F(30).
todos	A small Laravel 13 app with Blade and SQLite. It has no JavaScript build.
todos-serve	Serves todos over HTTP with server.NewHTTPHandler
todos-fcgi	Serves todos with server.NewFastCGIServer, behind FrankenPHP. Its mise.toml installs FrankenPHP.

What is inside

Nothing changed here since v0.1.0.

Component	Version
PHP	8.6.0RC3
gophper-wasm	v0.2.3
wazero	v1.12.0
Go	1.27.1

Install

Way	How
A release binary	Download the archive for your OS and CPU below. checksums.txt has their SHA-256.
mise	mise use -g github:mpyw/gophper@0.1.1
From source	CGO_ENABLED=0 go install github.com/mpyw/gophper/cmd/gophper@v0.1.1
As a library	go get github.com/mpyw/gophper@v0.1.1

Full Changelog: v0.1.0...v0.1.1

v0.1.0

The first release of gophper. It runs PHP from Go with no cgo.

gophper runs php-src, compiled to WebAssembly by gophper-wasm, on wazero.
It is the real Zend Engine, so the language behaves exactly like PHP.

Warning

This is an experiment. The API will change.
The PHP inside is 8.6.0RC3, a release candidate.

What is inside

Component	Version
PHP	8.6.0RC3
gophper-wasm	v0.2.3
wazero	v1.12.0
Go	1.27.1

gophper --version prints all of them. Put it in a bug report.

Install

Way	How
A release binary	Download the archive for your OS and CPU below. checksums.txt has their SHA-256.
mise	mise use -g github:mpyw/gophper@0.1.0
From source	CGO_ENABLED=0 go install github.com/mpyw/gophper/cmd/gophper@v0.1.0
As a library	go get github.com/mpyw/gophper@v0.1.0

Archives cover macOS, Linux and Windows, each on amd64 and arm64.

Highlights

Area	What you get
gophper php	The php CLI. A symlink named php works too. Signals reach pcntl handlers, so artisan queue:work stops cleanly.
gophper serve	Serves a PHP app over HTTP or HTTPS, with Let's Encrypt for --domain. Workers keep opcache warm.
gophper fcgi	A FastCGI server behind nginx, like php-fpm
Extensions	curl, pgsql, PDO and more are built in. gd, intl, redis, sodium, zip and others load at runtime.
Host access	Processes (proc_open and the rest), sockets, DNS, flock and file permissions go to the host
Go API	Engine runs the CLI or CGI SAPI. server gives an http.Handler and a FastCGI server. PHP can call Go functions.
Windows	Supported, with drive paths at /c, /d and so on. See the README's Windows section.

The sandbox

From Go, PHP gets nothing of the host unless Options says so.

Field	Off by default
FS	No file system
Processes	proc_open and the rest fail
Network	TCP, UDP and DNS fail
MemoryLimit	Caps PHP's memory. memory_limit cannot lift it.

wazero sees only a ctx's deadline and cancellation, never its values.
So its experimental settings in a caller's ctx cannot get around these fields.

Known limits

Topic	Status
Speed	About 3.3 times slower than native PHP. There is no JIT.
First run	Compiling PHP to machine code takes about 12 s on an Apple Silicon Mac. It is cached per user after that.
Fibers	Throws Fibers are not supported on this platform
pcntl_fork()	Fails

License

gophper is under the MIT License.
A binary also contains PHP, its libraries and Go modules, each under its own license.
To distribute one, pass on what gophper licenses prints.

See the README for everything else.