Proposal for a PHP-BASED Make facility

Folks, It has been suggested to me offlist that I should propose this idea on the list. I've seem recent discussions about the multi-os complexities of the make system for PHP, and there talk of using this new CMake system. Rather than YALTM (yet another language to master, we should have a PHP-BASED make facility for the following reasons: - PHP is cross platform already making it possible to easily

    and quickly to single source a PHP script based make system.

- Everyone involved with PHP knows PHP so the scripts will be

    maintained and enhanced by the community.

- All that is needed with a source distribution or as a

    separate distribution, is a PHPMAKE package that
    might include a root folder:

    phpmake/bin     minimum php binaries for the platform
                    i.e, php.exe, php5ts.dll for windows

    phpmake/scripts php scripts for the cross platform
                    make/build system

The beauty of this is that PHP is already cross platform so everyone involved with PHP at every OS have one thing in common, they know the PHP language! So there would be no need to learn another MAKE language, i.e., CMake, JavaScript, or some *nix make language, and it would offer an minimum learning curve for improvements and enhancements by PHP contributors where updates will immediately apply across the board for all platforms. It will get people like me more involved to improve the configuration and automation of the PHP building process by developing cross platform Interactive Console and/or GUI based frontends. -- Hector Santos, CTO Santronics Software, Inc.