With all the architectural changes under the hood, will it work with HipHop for PHP from FaceBook? And does it make a difference?

Here are the significant changes:

Symfony2 embraces standards: First, Symfony2 is willingly centered around the HTTP specification (just have a look at the built-in HTTP reverse proxy). Then, we are embracing the PHP standards: PHPUnit, namespaces, PSR-0 autoloader, … That makes Symfony2 easily interoperable with many other great PHP libraries.

Symfony2 is decoupled: Beside being a full-stack framework, Symfony2 is also a set of decoupled and cohesive components; Symfony2 is made of 21 components that can be used as standalone libraries: they have their own Git repositories, and they are all available as PEAR packages.

Symfony2 has many innovations that are unique in the PHP world:

• Symfony2 uses the Dependency Injection pattern extensively and it comes with a built-in Dependency Injection Container. It makes Symfony2 very flexible and easily customizable.
• Symfony2 is packaged as Distributions: A distribution is a pre-configured Symfony2 project with a selection of bundles and sensible defaults. The Symfony Standard Edition also comes with a Web configurator. That makes the installation and configuration of a new Symfony2 project fast and insanely easy.
• Everything is a Bundle in Symfony2: A bundle is a directory containing a set of files (PHP files, stylesheets, JavaScripts, images, …) that implement a single feature (a blog, a forum, etc). That changes everything. Share your bundles between your projects or publish them in the wild.
• Symfony2 is Fast: the raw performance of the framework is great, but there is more. By embracing the HTTP standard, and thanks to the ESI standard, you can make your application fly very easily. Make your application as dynamic as you need it to be, and still benefit from HTTP caching. And if you can afford the installation of a reverse proxy like Varnish, the performance of your application will just be incredible.
• Symfony2 eases the debugging of your application thanks to the Web Debug Toolbar and the Profiler: symfony1 was the very first major framework to come with a web debug toolbar. Symfony2 pushes the limits even further with a brand new debug toolbar and the introduction of a gorgeous profiler. The profiler gives you all the information you need to understand what’s going on behind the scene in case of a problem.
• Symfony2 simplifies your life as much as possible: we have worked hard to give you the best experience possible. After installing a distribution, the interactive generators will help you generate code easily by guiding you through some simple questions. And when an error occurs, Symfony2 goes beyond displaying the error message: it displays the whole stack trace, the linked exceptions, and all the files are one-click away from your IDE. We have also tweaked the error messages to make them as comprehensible as possible.
• Symfony takes Security very seriously. The Security component gives you all the tools you need to secure your applications: from the simple form logins to the more advanced X.509 certificates and ACLs, everything is as easy as adding a few settings in a configuration file. We have gone as far as implementing time-based attacks protection. Speaking of security, and thanks to the community again, the whole code base has been audited recently by SektionEins and all their remarks have been taken into account.

http://php.webtutor.pl/en/2011/05/17/drupal-hiphop-for-php-vs-apc-benchmark/

Current errors galore

-- Looking for curl_multi_select
-- Looking for curl_multi_select - not found
CMake Error at CMake/HPHPFindLibs.cmake:78 (message):
Custom libcurl is required with HipHop patches
Call Stack (most recent call first):
CMake/HPHPSetup.cmake:2 (include)
src/CMakeLists.txt:18 (include)-- Found ICU header files in /usr/include
-- Found ICU libraries: /usr/lib/libicuuc.so
CMake Error at CMake/HPHPFindLibs.cmake:108 (message):
ICU is too old, found 4.0 and we need 4.2
Call Stack (most recent call first):
CMake/HPHPSetup.cmake:2 (include)
src/CMakeLists.txt:18 (include)

-- Found Intel TBB
-- Found mcrypt: /usr/lib/libmcrypt.so
CMake Error at CMake/HPHPFindLibs.cmake:151 (message):
You need to install libcap
Call Stack (most recent call first):
CMake/HPHPSetup.cmake:2 (include)
src/CMakeLists.txt:18 (include)

Issues already handled

CMake Error: your CXX compiler: "CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER-NOTFOUND" was not found.   Please set CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER to a valid compiler path or name.

Unable to find the Boost header files.  Please set BOOST_ROOT to the root
directory containing Boost or BOOST_INCLUDEDIR to the directory containing
Boost's headers.

Call Stack (most recent call first):
CMake/HPHPFindLibs.cmake:20 (find_package)
CMake/HPHPSetup.cmake:2 (include)
src/CMakeLists.txt:18 (include)

CMake Error at CMake/FindMySQL.cmake:112 (MESSAGE):
Cannot find MySQL.  Include dir: MYSQL_INCLUDE_DIR-NOTFOUND library dir:
Call Stack (most recent call first):
CMake/HPHPFindLibs.cmake:30 (find_package)
CMake/HPHPSetup.cmake:2 (include)
src/CMakeLists.txt:18 (include)

Interesting facts are for example the five different modes:

• Mode 1: Compiling HipHop and running it directly.
• Mode 2: Compiling HipHop in a temporary directory and running the compiled program from the command line.
• Mode 3: Compiling HipHop in a temporary directory and running the compiled program as a web server.
• Mode 4: Interpreting HipHop directly.
• Mode 5: Starting a Web server or daemon and interpreting HipHop on the fly.

Also noteworthy is the documentation on compiling a large codebase.

Why would you want a sandbox? To try how your applications work with HipHop without breaking your everyday development process with a rather fresh piece of software.

Just keep in mind that HipHop will not magically accelerate your SQL queries and will, in no case give you the performance of using Cached Static HTML.

Preliminary estimation (by grepping the use of eval) indicates that it does look promising:

foo@bar:/var/www/hiphopphp.org$ grep -r eval\( . | grep php
./wp-admin/includes/class-pclzip.php://      eval('$v_result = '.$p_options[PCLZIP_CB_PRE_EXTRACT].'(PCLZIP_CB_PRE_EXTRACT, $v_local_header);');
./wp-admin/press-this.php:              var my_src = eval(
./wp-admin/press-this.php:                      var my_src = eval(
./wp-admin/press-this.php:                                                      eval(data);
./wp-admin/import/blogger.php:                                          eval('this.status='+text);
./wp-admin/js/revisions-js.php:eval(function(p,... [CUT]
./wp-includes/class-json.php: * Javascript, and can be directly eval()'ed with no further parsing
./wp-includes/functions.php:            if ( doubleval($bytes) >= $mag )
foo@bar:/var/www/hiphopphp.org$

NOTE: This does not cover any popular plugins, some of which might be using eval.

The enterprise developer community is dominated by Java and .NET developers. Java is a heavyweight technology. Historically, Microsoft has had a significant hold on the enterprise, primarily due to the hegemony of Microsoft Office, and the enterprise community has scoffed at PHP.

I beg to differ. I believe that even if PHP’s performance would have been one of the reasons it is not “robust” enough for the average enterprise it is not going to change that. The enterprise wants stability and support. Unless FaceBook (very unlikely) or some 3rd party (very likely) will provide a supported version of HipHop this will not change.

In addition the defacto “Enterprise PHP Framework” Zend Framework is unlikely to work with FaceBooks HipHop Implementation right away. And considering that Zend has it’s own Platform (http://www.zend.com/products/platform/) they are unlikely to approve HipHop as a certified platform in the near future. Oh and HipHop will always be a step behind the “real” PHP in terms of features, so so much for a “drop in solution”.

I do, however, think that HipHop will conquer the enterprise via a backdoor. It does seem like a perfect platform to squeeze all you can get from your hardware. Core business applications in the enterprise are generally given enough resources and have support subscriptions, so this is not where I am aiming at…

I believe the backdoor to the enterprise is SAAS. Companies such as Salesforce.com provide tools as a subscription via the web. These companies generally run custom software and have plenty of tech savvy staff. With this combination HipHop might be able to give a player the competitive advantage.

The competetive advantage would naturally be price as you can get the most out of your physical investment. I’d say the average customer does not care which platform you’re running on. As long as the platform is, indeed, running. Not walking. Or crawling.

So, what does this mean for the CodeIgniter community? In short, absolutely nothing. Most CodeIgniter developers are building application that will run on shared hosts, virtual private servers or a cloud-based virtualization system. Of that very large group of our community, an extremely small number have the capability to compile the HipHop or alter their configuration in order to serve HipHop pages.

Read the full story at Michaels blog: http://www.michaelwales.com/2010/02/what-does-hiphop-php-mean-for-codeigniter/

• http://www.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=358
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HipHop_(computing)

After the announcement had been I made I went domain shopping and got myself hiphopphp.org . Like for most of my domains I’ve really got no use for it (some collect Stamps, I collect Domains I suppose).

A few days after the announcement I got an idea that I’d set up  a blog to announce what works with HipHop and what does not, providing tips on how to make a certain functionality work, etc. This means popular software such as WordPress, Drupal, eZ Publish, Vanilla Forum, Small Machines Forum and the likes that under certain conditions could really benefit from HipHop.

The acceleration method used is complex and there will undoubtedly be a lot of issues with the Software around. And at the moment it is also compatible with PHP 5.2, so all 5.3 goodness is not available. No GOTO.

I’m a realist and realize that I will not have the time to make this blog relevant. So if you’re interested in participating – feel free to drop me a line at hiphopphp@gmail.com