Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:56847
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain lerdorf.com from 209.85.210.170 cause and error)
Message-ID: <4EE14E10.5050403@lerdorf.com>
Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:53:52 -0800
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:8.0) Gecko/20111124 Thunderbird/8.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Rasmus Schultz <rasmus@mindplay.dk>
CC: internals@lists.php.net
References: <CADqTB_gr_vy3b1SDYfLLh2kCAWR8psdAbEE4Hm38L1E6kGKY9A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CADqTB_gr_vy3b1SDYfLLh2kCAWR8psdAbEE4Hm38L1E6kGKY9A@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Phalanger
From: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf)

On 12/08/2011 03:28 PM, Rasmus Schultz wrote:
> Don't take this the wrong way, I'm merely trying to provoke your thoughts a
> bit with this e-mail! :-)
> 
> Has it occurred to anyone, to abandon the official PHP codebase and adopt
> Phalanger instead?
> 
> Some convincing (to me) points:
> 
> - Phalanger runs on Mono, meaning similar platform-reach as PHP. (but
> eliminating most platform-specific implementations.)
> 
> - It's fast. (probably fast enough to mostly eliminate the need for native
> extensions in general.)
> 
> - The community would be able to write modules/extensions in PHP or other
> CLR languages.
> 
> - It's secure. (not that C/FFI PHP extensions tend not to be trustworthy,
> but they do tend to come from a relatively small group of authors.)
> 
> - Access to more languages means a much bigger community who can contribute
> extensions and core patches.
> 
> - Access to existing CLR codebases means more third-party libraries can be
> readily integrated without writing and maintainting C/FFI wrappers.
> 
> - The codebase is new, clean and modern (it's not dragging around a lot of
> legacy baggage.)
> 
> - Fully take advantage of new 64-bit hardware (vector computations and
> larger address space) in all aspects. (core, extensions, PHP scripts).
> 
> I'm not going to try to sell you on the fact that the integration with the
> Windows world is tighter in Phalanger than in PHP - but it is a point that
> carries considerable weight  to many businesses.
> 
> People I know have had a tendency to view Phalanger as "PHP for Windows" -
> it's really not. It's PHP for CLR - and CLR is not (only) Windows. And it
> is readily available on most modern operating systems with good support for
> various hardware platforms.
> 
> Now, before you start flaming me - I'd love to hear precisely why you're
> eager to hang on to the C codebase. What are the benefits of the C codebase
> over Phalanger?
> 
> I understand the licensing may be an issue. It may be the argument that
> outweighs everything else, but I'm curious to hear what else would keep you
> from moving to Phalanger?

This is a complete non-starter. The bulk of PHP users are on
non-Windows, especially Linux, and Mono performance on Linux is really
not good. Last time I checked it was an order of magnitude slower on
Linux compared to the same hardware running Windows. Granted that was
quite a few years ago now and I assume it is no longer 10x slower.
Perhaps it is up to 4x or even 2x slower.

-Rasmus