Re: Zephir, and other tangents

> On Sep 17, 2024, at 8:57 AM, Adam Zielinski <adam.zielinski@automattic.com> wrote: > > > To summarize, I think PHP would benefit from: > > > > 1. Adding WASM for simple low-level extensibility that could run on > > shared hosts for things that are just not possible in PHP as described a > > few paragraphs prior, and where we could enhance functionality over time, > > > > 2. Constantly improving PHP the language, which is what you are solely > > advocating for over extensibility, > Hi Mike, > > I’m Adam, I'm building WordPress Playground [1] – it's WordPress running in the > browser via a WebAssembly PHP build [2]. I'm excited to see this discussion and wanted to offer > my perspective. > > WebAssembly support in PHP core would be a huge security and productivity improvement for the > PHP and WordPress communities. > > > To summarize, I think PHP would benefit from: > > > > 1. Adding WASM for simple low-level extensibility that could run on > > shared hosts for things that are just not possible in PHP as described a > > few paragraphs prior, and where we could enhance functionality over time, > > Exactly this! With WASM, WordPress would get access to fast, safe, and battle-tested libraries. > > Today, we're recreating a lot of existing libraries just to be able to use them in PHP, > e.g. parsers for HTML [3], XML [4], Zip [5], MySQL [6], or an HTTP client [7]. There are just no > viable alternatives. Viable, as in working on all webhosts, having stellar compliance with each > format's specification, supporting stream parsing, and having low footprint. For example, the > curl PHP extensions is brilliant, but it's unavailable on many webhosts. > > With WebAssembly support, we could stop rewriting and start leaning on the popular C, Rust, > etc. libraries instead. Who knows, maybe we could even polyfill the missing PHP extensions? > > > 2. Constantly improving PHP the language, which is what you are solely > > advocating for over extensibility, > > Just to add to that – I think WASM support is important for PHP to stay relevant. > There's an exponential advantage to building a library once and reusing it across the language > boundaries. A lot of companies is invested in PHP and that won't change in a day. However, > lacking access to the WASM ecosystem, I can easily imagine the ecosystem slowly gravitating towards > JavaScript, Python, Go, Rust, and other WASM-enabled languages. > > Security-wise, WebAssembly is Sandboxed and would enable safe processing of untrusted files. > Vulnerabilities like Zip slip [8] wouldn't affect a sandboxed filesystem. Perhaps we could even > create a secure enclave for running composer packages and WordPress plugins without having to fully > trust them. > > Another use-case is code reuse between JavaScript and PHP. I'm sceptical this could work > with reasonable speed and resource consumption, but let's assume for a moment there is a ultra > low overhead JavaScript runtime in WebAssembly. WordPress could have a consistent templating > language. PHP backend would render the website markup using the same templates and libraries as the > JavaScript frontend. Half the code would achieve the same task. > > Also, here's a few interesting "WASM in PHP" projects I found – maybe they > would be helpful: > - WebAssembly runtime built in PHP (!) > https://github.com/jasperweyne/unwasm > <https://github.com/jasperweyne/unwasm> > - WebAssembly runtime as a PHP language extension: > https://github.com/veewee/ext-wasm > <https://github.com/veewee/ext-wasm> > - WebAssembly runtime as a PHP language extension: > https://github.com/extism/php-sdk > <https://github.com/extism/php-sdk> > > [1] https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground/ > <https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground/> > [2] > https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground/tree/trunk/packages/php-wasm/compile > <https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground/tree/trunk/packages/php-wasm/compile> > [3] > https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/wp_html_processor/ > <https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/wp_html_processor/> > [4] https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/6713 > <https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/6713> > [5] > https://github.com/WordPress/blueprints-library/blob/87afea1f9a244062a14aeff3949aae054bf74b70/src/WordPress/Zip/ZipStreamReader.php > <https://github.com/WordPress/blueprints-library/blob/87afea1f9a244062a14aeff3949aae054bf74b70/src/WordPress/Zip/ZipStreamReader.php> > [6] > https://github.com/WordPress/sqlite-database-integration/pull/157 > <https://github.com/WordPress/sqlite-database-integration/pull/157> > [7] > https://github.com/WordPress/blueprints-library/blob/trunk/src/WordPress/AsyncHttp/Client.php > <https://github.com/WordPress/blueprints-library/blob/trunk/src/WordPress/AsyncHttp/Client.php> > [8] https://security.snyk.io/research/zip-slip-vulnerability > <https://security.snyk.io/research/zip-slip-vulnerability> Thanks for this. It is super great information. Want to work on an RFC? -Mike