PHP support

[xiongxin]

It would be great if PHP was supported

Thanks

[brettwooldridge]

@xiongxin "Why PHP is not supported?" is rather a rude question. This is a volunteer effort, there is no entitlement to support of any particular language.

"It would be great if PHP was supported" or "I would like to vote for PHP support" would be a request that developers are more likely to respond positively to.

[thomaswue]

It is a legitimate question and thanks for asking it.

We would be happy to collaborate with one of the existing PHP implementors for adding PHP support (e.g., Zend or Facebook). Or maybe adding Hack support, which is a PHP dialect.

Implementing a language on GraalVM is a lot easier than from scratch (because compiler, GC, and other infrastructure pieces are provided for free). For languages with complex semantics (and a large library implemented in native code) like PHP it is still a considerable effort. We can support such an effort, but are ourselves currently focused on JavaScript, R, Ruby, and Python.

We can potentially fund a student thesis project or internship to investigate the topic if there is a talented and motivated candidate for exploring this task.

[pabl0rg]

Would it be possible to levrage anything from quercus (a php interpreter and stamdard library written in java)?

https://github.com/am-immanuel/quercus [edited link]

[lucaswerkmeister]

I assume that should be this Quercus: https://github.com/CleverCloud/Quercus

[pabl0rg]

Sorry, I fixed the link. The CleverCloud repo has been abandoned for a long time. This one has more recent updates: https://github.com/am-immanuel/quercus

[inoop]

There appears to be an Antlr gammar here: https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/tree/master/php

There's also JPHP: https://github.com/jphp-group/jphp

[mcarbonneaux]

My addition to this exchange...

in what i understand about graalvm, they 3 way to do :

• implemente with Truffle framework an php ast opcode interpreter....
• to use jvm bytecode...
• or llvm bytecode that are already supported...

AST interpreter approch...

To generate the php ast there already differente solution:

• https://github.com/nikic/PHP-Parser

A PHP parser written in pure PHP that generate AST.
they support PHP 5.6 to 7.2 syntax

note: this solution make possible bootstraping of php parser in graalvm...

This solution are not 100% original parsing solution...

• https://github.com/derickr/vld

The Vulcan Logic Dumper is and php extension that hooks into the Zend Engine and dumps all the opcodes (execution units) of a script. They use Zend Engine parser result.

• https://github.com/nikic/php-ast

This is a php extension that exposes the abstract syntax tree generated by PHP 7 (like vld). They use Zend Engine parser result.

• phpdbg, since PHP 5.6

phpdbg -p* test.php

• Opcache, since PHP 7.1

php -d opcache.opt_debug_level=0x10000 test.php

• PHP Tokenizer extension (http://php.net/manual/fr/function.token-get-all.php)

php function token_get_all from tokenizer extension permit to get ast from php source.

the advantage of this solutions they use original php parser, and à 100% compatible with original PHP.

but with ast generated we need to code a ast interpreter for php opcode....

Quercus dont generate php obcode, but generate java code directly from php parsing... is not a good starting point to implement php ast interepreter... but add many php extension implemented in java that can be usefull to add this extension to the final result...

jvm Bytecode approch:

JPHP parse php code and generate JVM bytecode... not implemente all standard php library but can be a good start point to start beceause they generate bytecode... that are directly usable in graalvm... but not to make a php ast interpreter...

LLVM bytecode approch:

• https://pecl.php.net/package/llvm

this php extension generate llvm assembly from php source with original parser.

possible C extension in grallvm language

in truffleruby i've seen that implement extension in c also, in that is possible to convert php extension to graalvm, to complement php ast intepreter...

Zend Engine Opcode list to implemente :

• https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/Zend/zend_vm_opcodes.h

good internal explanation of php zend engine:

• http://nikic.github.io/2017/04/14/PHP-7-Virtual-machine.html
• http://web.ist.utl.pt/nuno.lopes/pres/PHP_JIT_LLVM_conf08.pdf
• http://blog.golemon.com/2008/01/understanding-opcodes.html

the php specification:

• https://github.com/php/php-langspec

final comment...

there a hard work to do all of that !

[wjmboss]

Support for PHP has a promising future, php has a large number of users and open source projects, and the php language itself is flawed without thread and coroutine, if graalvm fully supports php and leads php in a new direction of development, Graalvm will be an advocate of multilingual development in the near future, so support PHP language very important.

[timglabisch]

any news on this? php has a great ecosystem and is widely adopted.
... and a lot of php developers want a different/better runtime.

[tarsa]

Grammar probably isn't a big problem. A big problem is finding a suitable (e.g. license compatible) and reliably maintained standard library implementation that could be actively reused in GraalVM (i.e. third party would be responsible for maintaining that standard library). Note that TruffleRuby effort is going for many years but it still is unable to run Ruby on Rails fully, the primary Ruby web framework. If a similar situation happens in PHP case then the effort would be effectively wasted - PHP implementation that can't run web frameworks is essentially useless (I guess).

[xiao-nz]

LLVM bytecode approch:

• https://pecl.php.net/package/llvm

This extension have no release ...

The code have 8 years old https://github.com/jabez-php/llvm

[kcloze]

PHP has many C extension, I think it's a very hard work to do.

[aurimasniekis]

I found a php antlr parser for 7.4 syntax looks like it works pretty well

https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/tree/master/php

@kcloze I don't think it has to do anything with C extensions if I understand correctly graalvm is basically a custom implementation of the language not just wrapping compiler/interpreter