Hello :-),
We see more and more PHP interpreters or compilers out there:
* the historical interpreter [1],
* interpreter from Facebook [2],
* interpreter written for .NET [3],
* interpreter written for JVM [4],
* maybe I forgot some of them.
Also, we see more and more languages that compile into PHP or are wrappers to create extensions, such as:
* Zephir, a pseudo-language to create extensions [5],
* PHP-CPP, a C++ library to create extensions [6].
All these projects are great for PHP! Yes they are! But, most of these implementations, interpreters, extensions wrappers etc., are incomplete or propose extra features that is not in the historical interpreter. The need of a PHP specification/standard is more and more important: language syntax, semantics, features, extensions API, etc., must be specified in order to see more collaborations and quality tools.
We can imagine seeing new contributors on the specification, and whatever the implementation, it will benefit to the users and developers. Yes it will take a lot of time. Yes it will be difficult. Yes it will reveal some leaks in the historical interpreter. Yes the language will be more important than the interpreter. But it will give us a lead, a path to follow, a goal, and moreover, it will ensure the same experience to all PHP users no matter the interpreters they used.
If a new interpreter provides a nice feature, then, a discussion can start to update the standard, but if there is no one, which interpreter will be chosen by the user? If there is a standard, we can compare interpreters regarding this standard and not idiotic benchmarks that show anything.
Finally, I think that internal@ is responsible to start such a standardization process because this group has made the historical interpreter. In addition, I think that internal@ is also responsible to promote this standard and invite other actors to collaborate. These last years, PHP has shown a new face, a face of unity and pragmatism (new release process, RFC debates etc.). Such a standardization process will be strong and can really put PHP forward.
Thoughts?
Best regards.
[1] http://php.net/
[2] http://hhvm.com/
[3] https://github.com/DEVSENSE/Phalanger
[4] https://github.com/dim-s/jphp
[5] http://zephir-lang.com/
[6] http://www.php-cpp.com/
--
Ivan Enderlin
Developer of Hoa
http://hoa-project.net/
PhD. student at DISC/Femto-ST (Vesontio) and INRIA (Cassis)
http://disc.univ-fcomte.fr/ and http://www.inria.fr/
Member of HTML and WebApps Working Group of W3C
http://w3.org/