Proposal for a PHP-BASED Make facility

17 years ago by Hector Santos — view source

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Folks,

It has been suggested to me offlist that I should propose this idea on
the list.

I've seem recent discussions about the multi-os complexities of the make
system for PHP, and there talk of using this new CMake system.

Rather than YALTM (yet another language to master, we should have a
PHP-BASED make facility for the following reasons:

PHP is cross platform already making it possible to easily
and quickly to single source a PHP script based make system.
Everyone involved with PHP knows PHP so the scripts will be
maintained and enhanced by the community.
All that is needed with a source distribution or as a
separate distribution, is a PHPMAKE package that
might include a root folder:

phpmake/bin minimum php binaries for the platform
i.e, php.exe, php5ts.dll for windows

phpmake/scripts php scripts for the cross platform
make/build system

The beauty of this is that PHP is already cross platform so everyone
involved with PHP at every OS have one thing in common, they know the
PHP language! So there would be no need to learn another MAKE language,
i.e., CMake, JavaScript, or some *nix make language, and it would offer
an minimum learning curve for improvements and enhancements by PHP
contributors where updates will immediately apply across the board for
all platforms.

It will get people like me more involved to improve the configuration
and automation of the PHP building process by developing cross platform
Interactive Console and/or GUI based frontends.

--
Hector Santos, CTO
Santronics Software, Inc.

17 years ago by Alexey Zakhlestin — view source

unread

Folks,

It has been suggested to me offlist that I should propose this idea on the
list.

I've seem recent discussions about the multi-os complexities of the make
system for PHP, and there talk of using this new CMake system.

Rather than YALTM (yet another language to master, we should have a
PHP-BASED make facility for the following reasons:

It was already proposed and declined, because the main complexity is
not actual "scripting" of build-process, but cross-platform
differences. Autotools and CMake already have solutions for these, but
if the build-systems is written from scratch we would have to
"reinvent the wheel"

PHP is cross platform already making it possible to easily
and quickly to single source a PHP script based make system.

Everyone involved with PHP knows PHP so the scripts will be
maintained and enhanced by the community.

All that is needed with a source distribution or as a
separate distribution, is a PHPMAKE package that
might include a root folder:

phpmake/bin minimum php binaries for the platform
i.e, php.exe, php5ts.dll for windows

phpmake/scripts php scripts for the cross platform
make/build system

The beauty of this is that PHP is already cross platform so everyone
involved with PHP at every OS have one thing in common, they know the PHP
language! So there would be no need to learn another MAKE language, i.e.,
CMake, JavaScript, or some *nix make language, and it would offer an minimum
learning curve for improvements and enhancements by PHP contributors where
updates will immediately apply across the board for all platforms.

It will get people like me more involved to improve the configuration and
automation of the PHP building process by developing cross platform
Interactive Console and/or GUI based frontends.

--
Hector Santos, CTO
Santronics Software, Inc.

--

--
Alexey Zakhlestin
http://blog.milkfarmsoft.com/

17 years ago by Steph Fox — view source

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Hi Alexey,

It was already proposed and declined,

This discussion seems to have passed me by... any idea when/where it was
held?

Thanks,

Steph

17 years ago by Alexey Zakhlestin — view source

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Hi Alexey,

It was already proposed and declined,

This discussion seems to have passed me by... any idea when/where it was
held?

I guess I made it sound too "loud". I remembered it to be larger than it was ;)
http://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=120600893618730&w=4

--
Alexey Zakhlestin
http://blog.milkfarmsoft.com/

17 years ago by johannes@php.net — view source

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Hi,

All that is needed with a source distribution or as a
separate distribution, is a PHPMAKE package that
might include a root folder:

phpmake/bin minimum php binaries for the platform
i.e, php.exe, php5ts.dll for windows

That's a hen and egg problem then - one would need PHP to build PHP and
we don't have the infrastructure to provide binaries for all the
platforms we support (there's more than Linux and Windows)

And then you have to do quite some work others already did for finding
system difference - and keep the systems database and/or checks up to
date - that's far from our scope.

Please read about what the autotools, cmake and others are doing.

johannes

17 years ago by Pierre Joye — view source

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hi,

Folks,

It has been suggested to me offlist that I should propose this idea on the
list.

I've seem recent discussions about the multi-os complexities of the make
system for PHP, and there talk of using this new CMake system.

It is not talks, it is a google summer of code project:

http://wiki.php.net/gsoc/2008

He has already began and he is doing great progress.

Cheers,

Pierre
http://blog.thepimp.net | http://www.libgd.org

17 years ago by johannes@php.net — view source

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Hi,

All that is needed with a source distribution or as a
separate distribution, is a PHPMAKE package that
might include a root folder:

phpmake/bin minimum php binaries for the platform
i.e, php.exe, php5ts.dll for windows

That's a hen and egg problem then - one would need PHP to build PHP and
we don't have the infrastructure to provide binaries for all the
platforms we support (there's more than Linux and Windows)

That's what I thought too, but you still still have the same
(chicken/egg) issues of PHP being dependent on what OS the
AutoTools/CMake facility works on.

The basic requirement of being able to port the minimal set of PHP files
for an OS would still need to required in either case.

If the porting is simpler for autotools/cmake than raw PHP, then I can
see that as a plus.

Well the difference ist: For an own build system we do to have it our
own and verify it on each platform, autotools/cmake are used by lots of
other projects with many many more contributors which keeps the things
running. Additional most OS packagers add these tool to their packages
themselves as they are essentially for compiling basically anything.

Without autotools you can't compile many stuff PHP depends on on the
platform so the autotools have to be ported anyways before PHP can be
build there....

Personally, as a side note, I think PHP makes should be separated (each
using a common/structure methodology for PHP). I'm still catching up,
but there seems to to be a tremendous amount of complexity when trying
to auto configure and build it all as one big make. For example, it
would be ideal, IMO, if I can do:
    domake MYEXTENSION
    domake PDO
    domake MYSQL
    domake PHP5TS_DLL
    domake OFFICIAL_RELEASE_MODULES_ONLY
    domake ALL

build extensions shared (--with-foo=shared) then you can do "make
$target" where target might be modules/$extension.so so it's all there
and works in a way everybody used to the autotools way of doing things
can understand witrhout reading any documentation. An own system would
need lot's of documentation so Joe Admin can compile it the way he wants
it.

and not worry about all the erroneous errors and warnings you might get
with its attempt to build other parts that you don't need to rebuild.

make only compiles the things it has to compile for building the
specified target, if your target is all (which is the default) it
compiles the php executables and all modules requested (if sources have
changed after the last build).

In the end: our build system works (mostly) and I doubt a PHP based
system can fix the remaining issues in a sane way, especially not
without making it more complex. Every *nix admin knows how to use
autotools, no admin knows about PHP and a PHP-specific build system and
that's the main target group for a build system.

johannes

17 years ago by Alejandro Leiva — view source

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El 15/05/2008, a las 12:17, Johannes Schlüter escribió:

Hi,

All that is needed with a source distribution or as a
separate distribution, is a PHPMAKE package that
might include a root folder:

phpmake/bin minimum php binaries for the platform
i.e, php.exe, php5ts.dll for windows

That's a hen and egg problem then - one would need PHP to build
PHP and
we don't have the infrastructure to provide binaries for all the
platforms we support (there's more than Linux and Windows)

That's what I thought too, but you still still have the same
(chicken/egg) issues of PHP being dependent on what OS the
AutoTools/CMake facility works on.

The basic requirement of being able to port the minimal set of PHP
files
for an OS would still need to required in either case.

If the porting is simpler for autotools/cmake than raw PHP, then I
can
see that as a plus.

Well the difference ist: For an own build system we do to have it
our
own and verify it on each platform, autotools/cmake are used by lots
of
other projects with many many more contributors which keeps the things
running. Additional most OS packagers add these tool to their packages
themselves as they are essentially for compiling basically anything.

Without autotools you can't compile many stuff PHP depends on on the
platform so the autotools have to be ported anyways before PHP can be
build there....

Take other path is shoot yourself in the foot. Autotools and CMake are
very mature and take care of many problems across differents
architectures.

Regards,

Alejandro Leiva