Apache and Opcode caches integration about phpphp HOT 6 CLOSED

I would just like to make one thing clear with this project. It is not intended to replace PHP. It is not intended to be a production implementation.

As far as the root questions: can it be used with Apache? Theoretically, we could build a FastCGI SAPI and use that to integrate with Apache. Shouldn't be too hard, just need to build it.

As far as opcodes: we do generate them. They differ slightly from the core opcodes, but they are generally close enough where we may be able to translate. But that's a bit off...

As far as compiling PHPPHP to C, I think that's out of the question. Even with HipHop (which doesn't compile to C/C++ anymore), the performance just wouldn't be there. The only way we could get even performance would be to introduce a JIT compiler in PHPPHP, and have it generate machine code for PHP code. But that's a TON of work, and may not even give us significant performance (depending on the intricacies of the VM it runs on top of)... But it's a possibility...

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Thank you for taking the time to answer.

First, I understand you don't intend to replace PHP, I know you both contribute to it and it wouldn't really make sense.

But theoretically speaking : regarding the PHPPHP opcodes, I figure after all they don't need to match PHP's opcodes. If you cache them, executing php code should be as fast as with PHPPHP as with PHP?

And then I don't understand the need for JIT compilation? If PHPPHP opcodes are generated "slowly" but cached, everything should be good?

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@mnapoli Generating opcodes and then loading them into PHP is something we could do, though it would be a good bit more complicated than what is done now. In particular we would have to use the exact structure of the current ops and also generate all the other additional structures, ranging from compiled and temporary variables to literals and caching slots. We'd have to get this into a binary format that can be imported somehow (e.g. using apc bindumps), which again isn't trivial, as we'd have to do stuff like pointer swizzling etc.

So yeah, it's possible, and maybe its even worth giving it a try. But it will need a good bit of work.

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@nikic Actually I meant (in my reply) to cache PHPPHP's opcodes (and never even bother to use PHP, well except for executing PHPPHP itself). Like having an APC for PHPPHP, so that PHPPHP parses php files only once.

Once php files are parsed, their opcodes are cached and reused for the next executions.

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@mnapoli Compilation time is really not a concern. The thing that makes PHPPHP slow is the fact that we need to run those opcodes, which is very very very slow. The only way to make it fast is to load them as actual PHP opcodes ;)

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@nikic Ahhh ok I thought those opcodes were really low level.

Thanks! (I guess I can close the issue now)

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