Re: Is it possible introduce HHVM into PHP kernel tree?

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 9:36 AM, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me> wrote: > > On 03/01/14 16:31, Rowan Collins wrote: >> >> It occurs to me that an interesting direction to consider would be >> moving towards having a PHP language specification, rather than a single >> reference implementation. Then both the Zend Engine (as distributed by >> PHP.net) and HHVM could be implementations of that language >> specification, with documented limitations / deviations. >> >> Such a specification might also be useful in other ways - for instance, >> cross-checking with unit tests and documentation, and establishing clear >> baselines when discussing RFCs and maintaining (or not) compatibility >> between releases. >> >> Obviously, though, this would require the folks in charge of both >> implementations to be interested enough in the project to spend time on >> it. >> >> Just a thought... >> > > It's something I'd definitely like to see, and is perhaps something the > long-awaited PHP 6 could have. One of PHP's big problems is the fact that > there is no real specification whatsoever, only the single Zend > implementation. Of course, this presents a problem in specifying PHP's > behaviour, as the result would likely be "do exactly what the Zend engine > does". Perhaps we'd discover things in Zend which don't work the way > they're supposed to, mind. I'd personally like to see a PHP language specification as well. With a spec in mind, it would be much easier to create more implementations and competition can be quite healthy for a product. I'm not going to pretend that a spec alone would make PHP better as a whole; it would also require a lot of work that initially doesn't help anyone. In the long-term though, I think it would help PHP and that's why I'd support it.