php vendor/bin/boson compile

[davidnurdin]

Hi,

It is possible to pack .SO files (or .DLL in windows distri) in the binary produced by php vendor/bin/boson compile ?
If yes, how ?

Thanks
:)

[SerafimArts]

Hello! PHP does not support loading external binaries from within streams, like:

$ffi = FFI::cdef('', 'phar://file.so');

Therefore, it is impossible to pack a so/dll inside the resource section (as PHP source code is currently written) of an executable file in a simple way.

However, technically, it seems possible. It requires compiling the PHP source code (https://github.com/crazywhalecc/static-php-cli) and statically linking it to the frontend (https://github.com/boson-php/frontend-src) so that all public (export) functions become part of PHP itself.

After this, it will be possible to use Boson functions from PHP itself (That is, the binary will use itself as an external library, it seems that the COFF/ELF format allows this), for example:

$ffi = FFI::cdef('...', \PHP_BINARY);

It is worth considering, however, that this method will not allow you to run the project without mandatory compilation... In theory, this is possible, but in practice, I can't imagine how long it would take to implement it correctly (my primary language is PHP). Experimentation is needed.