Good evening, internals!
I have posted about this just a while ago - I am slightly concerned about the current build system.
Nothing against autotools and the current „phpize“ system - t runs, is stable, and well
concepted. But currently, PHP is a program on its own, and to me, it is hard to imagine being able
to embed it on a system - like Windows, where you have nothing like apt, yum, zypper, or whatever. I
am writing a package manager for that reason…but it might want to integrate PHP for a varity of
reasons. But at the current state, its hard to implement PHP into anything, without getting a hang
on itself first.
Setting up the deps folder with the required headers and dll’s, or compiling other stuff on UNIX
is okay. But to embed PHP, one needs to be able to run a proper shell - bash - have make and some
headers/libs installed, making it rather hard to implement.
I for myself only want to implement parts of PHP. Like the core engine, the pthreads PECL extension
and using PHP-CPP, I will be making my libd0p and others available to PHP too. But if I want to
build on Windows, I am quite lost.
The build system I deem to use is a script-like system, and it is by nature windows compatible. It
might not be as direct as make, or not even Ninja, but things like the following work quite nicely.
—
# Builting some librarys and making it into a binary.
target static_lib("d0p") {
// I could have said "target libd0p.a" - but using a function, I can make this cross
platform.
// So it is either .a or .lib, depending on the os.
rule "static_lib";
input [files("libd0p/*.cpp")];
requires [targets("d0p")]; // We can assign tags for easer finding
}
target static_lib("canister") {
rule "static_lib";
tag "d0p";
input [files("libcanister/src/*.cpp")];
CPPFLAGS = CPPFLAGS.define("foo=bar"); # Will automaticaly set -D or /D and add to the
flags
}
target static_lib("bu") {
rule "static_lib";
tag "d0p";
input [
files("libbu/src/stable/*.cpp"),
files("libbu/src/experimental/*.cpp"),
files("libbu/src/unstable/*.cpp")
];
CPPFLAGS = CPPFLAGS.include("libbu/");
}
target "d0p-tool" {
rule "exe";
requires [targets("d0p")];
input "d0p.cpp";
CPPFLAGS = CPPFLAGS.include("libbu/").include("libcanister/src");
}
action "default" {
build: "d0p";
}
—
This build system is currently learning configuration (checking for headers, functions, libraries,
tools), generating and downloading of files. After this is done, I hope to replicate PHP’s main
build system int hat way - so I can then include the file from a main file. But in order to do this,
I need to learn as much as I can about the very basic PHP building.
But this isnt just useful for me. For anyone who wishes to integrate a basic PHP engine, this would
be some useful knowledge. What to check for, what to generate - and then, what to build - to just
get a basic thing up and running.
As much as I have searched for now, PHP generates a tiny bit of files:
./ext/date/lib/timelib_config.h
./main/build-defs.h
./main/internal_functions.c
./main/internal_functions_cli.c
./main/php_config.h
./TSRM/tsrm_config.h
./Zend/zend_config.h
But, can’t this process be simplified? For example:
$ cat TSRM/tsrm_config.h
#include <../main/php_config.h>
Why do we even need this file, if it is more or less pointless, as it just includes a file at
another location?
My goal is to achieve a way to make embedding PHP for others simpler - that will incldue adding
PHP-CPP. Because its structured so simple, that it only comes with a makefile - and you basically
could:
g++ -c src/*.cpp -I. -Iinclude
ar rcs libphpcpp.a *.o
Voila, built.
So, to sumarize my points that I somehow tried to explain, but I am not very good with wording
myself in english - my main language is german.
- Autotools is not capable of properly including other projects, without forcing more configure
calls, which check things over and over again.
- Someone may sumarize how to compile the basic PHP by hand - like, what files to compile with gcc
and which .o’s to put together for a basic libphp5.a?
- Can the build of PHP be made easier, for embedding purpose - by refactoring some generations and
checks?
I will keep investigating into this topic, as I really want to use PHP - now even more avter finding
out about PHP-CPP, which is like, the best „addon“ to PHP that I have ever, ever seen…thanks
again to the person who posted about that, its an amazing finding!
Kind regards, Ingwie