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Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2021 09:42:24 -0600
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To: php internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE] Fibers
From: aaron@trowski.com (Aaron Piotrowski)



> On Mar 11, 2021, at 7:56 AM, =E9=9F=A9=E5=A4=A9=E5=B3=B0 =
<rango@swoole.com> wrote:
>=20
> Hi,
> I am come from Chinese, we may have some cultural differences, and =
there may be some difficulties in communication. I try to express my =
opinion.
> To be precise, the fiber can only be used for amphp and reactphp or =
other event-driven asynchronous IO frameworks developed using php. The =
RFC does not mention how an extension uses fiber.
> Fiber is not like threads or processes of operating system. It is not =
parallel, nor is it concurrent. This requires an event-driven scheduler =
to have practical value. Currently php does not have event-driven =
support. So normal web developers don=E2=80=99t know how to use fiber. =
It is for developers of asynchronous io programming.=20
> I just suggest first to provide a PECL extension like =
ext-event/ext-libevent, no need to be integrated into php now. Swoole is =
also provided to users as a PECL extension.
>=20

Hello,

I agree that this feature is targeted at libraries wishing to provide =
better async I/O. What I disagree with is that this means it should not =
be a part of PHP.

Whether many developers realize it or not, several commonly used =
libraries already contain some async I/O features, often implemented =
with promises, which have some API trade-offs to attempt to integrate =
async into typical synchronous code. Guzzle, Symfony, and Psalm are =
three commonly used libraries that have asynchronous APIs available.

Having fibers available in core will allow these libraries to offer =
async code with an improved, more intuitive API as well as expand their =
use of async I/O beyond what it typically has been used for, HTTP =
requests, to include databases, redis, file access, etc.

An event scheduler is needed for async I/O to work, but several =
implementations already exist in user space and work very well with =
fibers, as I and ReactPHP team can attest. Fibers are the key to =
integrating these event schedulers into the greater PHP community.

Swoole provides an entire large, opinionated framework for async coding. =
That=E2=80=99s fantastic! However, it is not a flexible tool that any =
library can use for a variety of purposes. It is more akin to choosing a =
framework such as Laravel or Yii to write your PHP app.

Event-driven programming is desperately needed in the PHP community. =
Right now PHP contains nearly all the tools for fantastic, clear, =
intuitive user space async code. This is the one missing piece.

Aaron Piotrowski