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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Is it possible introduce HHVM into PHP kernel tree?
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

Andrea Faulds wrote (on 03/01/2014):
>
>
> On 03/01/14 06:20, Pierre Joye wrote:
>>
>> While it is very appealing there are many reasons to do not even 
>> consider
>> it as this  stage:
>>
>> . CLA and only controlled by one single company. We had the single 
>> company
>> control of our engine in the past, it did UA no good.
>>
>> . barely portable, relies on gcc only
>>
>> . will reduce even more the amount of contributors able to 
>> participate in
>> the engine development (due to technical, legal or related reasons.
>>
>
> It's my understanding that HHVM is incomplete, as well. Does HHVM 
> implement the full basic functionality of PHP? Are there still things 
> which don't work for performance reasons?
>

It occurs to me that an interesting direction to consider would be 
moving towards having a PHP language specification, rather than a single 
reference implementation. Then both the Zend Engine (as distributed by 
PHP.net) and HHVM could be implementations of that language 
specification, with documented limitations / deviations.

Such a specification might also be useful in other ways - for instance, 
cross-checking with unit tests and documentation, and establishing clear 
baselines when discussing RFCs and maintaining (or not) compatibility 
between releases.

Obviously, though, this would require the folks in charge of both 
implementations to be interested enough in the project to spend time on it.

Just a thought...
-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]