Show HN: Package PHP apps as standalone, self-executable binaries

by kdunglas • 3 years ago

29 7 3 years ago

Oh nice! I hate PHP a bit less than I did before!

One of my biggest issues with PHP is that it doesn't cleanly separate the app and the system.

You configure your server to work with PHP, you set up access control rules on the server for what files they can see, you enable modules.

So then you need an extra tool to manage the configuration, and lots of YAML to declare what it should be.... meanwhile with Python you just plop it in a virtualenv and pip manages all the moving parts.

It's good to see the PHP ecosystem getting tools like this! Maybe we'll see more self hostable stuff we can install with one click now!

genmud• 3 years ago

One of my biggest issues with PHP is that it doesn't cleanly separate the app and the system.

Its probably been a couple decades since I looked at PHP stuff (like php4 was probably the last version I used, though PHP5 might have just been released), but isn't that kind of how the main interpreter was implemented, and many of the patterns built into the language? IIRC there were things like default paths based on OS to system configs and stuff like that.

It never struck me as something that was designed to be ran as a user, but installed on a system and utilized by users. I'm just going by gut feels, but its my perception that other interpreters have more relative paths than PHP.

eternityforest3• 3 years ago

It makes sense to design it to be installed like that, my problem is it doesn't seem to be designed for automated setup. It was originally Personal Home Page, and feels like it started as the kind of thing you'd run on a long-running server you SSH into and mess with manually, with lots of stuff built yourself and all designed to work together.

Other languages feel a bit more at home in a "Servers can be remade instantly from declarative config, manually making changes on a production server isn't a thing, and software is full of lots of third party pieces" environment, but then again, maybe I just don't use PHP enough to understand the idioms and ecosystem and there's solutions I don't know about.

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

Sounds like a the classic: works on my machine; let’s ship your machine; containers!

stephenr2• 3 years ago

So then you need an extra tool to manage the configuration, and lots of YAML to declare what it should be....

You do? Can you be more specific about what tool you mean, and what YAML you need?

eternityforest3• 3 years ago

In my case, if I have a server to manage I'm probably using Ansible, but I'm sure everyone has their own preferred tool, unless they like directly configuring things manually.

Show HN: Package PHP apps as standalone, self-executable binaries

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