[Mono-devel-list] PHP and mono

[Michael L Torrie]

On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 11:23 -0400, Robert Hostetter wrote:
> Why target parrot as many are talking about PHP doing in the future? 
> Wouldn't mono be more ideal?  If all the P languages (Python, PHP, and
> Perl) targetted mono the energy could be devoted to a common
> infrastructure (mod_mono).  Also currently PHP throws away the
> compiled bytecodes (unless you invest in the Zend cache or use one of
> the not-heavily-maintained cachers.)  APC and Turck MMCache have very
> little development activity, and the maintainer of Turck was recently
> hired by Zend and he therefore discontinued development.  By using a
> common runtime the compilation results of the JIT could be cached and
> all languages would benefit.  Additionally easy use of PHP in other
> mono languages and vice versa would be a benefit (a major reason why
> people want to move to Parrot).  Lastly if Ironpython can do it and be
> fast (although apparently the author found a few bugs in Mono that
> caused a major slowdown) why can't PHP?  These were my thoughts
> anyway.  I just don't understand why create yet another platform
> (parrot) when mono has already been created.

I disagree with you.  

The reason for another platform is that most of the creators of these
languages don't trust mono, or rather don't trust that mono will always
be available.  To them, mono is Microsoft's platform, and they don't
want to be beholden to Microsoft in any way.  This is why parrot was
started in the first place.  As much as I get frustrated by people who
avoid Mono simply because it's tied to Microsoft, they do have a very
valid point.  And while Microsoft's exercise of control (and potential
to disrupt open-source use of .NET) over mono means little to me for
most application development, in terms of staking your entire language
and environment on it, there are questions that have yet to be
answered. 

IronPython indeed proved that dynamic languages can run under .NET quite
successfully.  Thus we can have .NET as yet another one of many targets
for Python, or PHP, or Perl or whatever.  This makes the languages even
more portable.

WThere is also no reason why parrot itself couldn't benefit from
advancements in JIT technology.  I don't consider it wasted effort at
all.

> 
> God Bless,
> Robert Hostetter
> 
> 
> On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 16:45:38 +0200, Andrea Colanicchia
> <andrea.colanicchia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 09:48:19 -0400, Robert Hostetter
> > <robert.hostetter at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Is anyone currently working on implementing PHP in mono?
> > 
> > I don't know, but exists an extension in PHP to use mono assemblies:
> > 
> > http://www.php.net/~sterling/mono/
> > 
> > Bye, Andrea.
> >
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