polarphp/polarphp

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases no_license

Adoption not part of the score

1037 stars · 75 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

polarphp is an alternative compiler and runtime for the PHP programming language, rewrapping the Zend VM and adding a new runtime library (libpdk) inspired by NodeJS and Go. It aims to turn PHP into a general-purpose scripting language with async programming, coroutines, threads, built-in Unicode support, and a package manager, dropping legacy web-only features.

Use cases

• run PHP as a general-purpose server-side scripting language
• use PHP with coroutines and async programming outside the web
• alternative PHP compiler and runtime to the official Zend distribution
• build standalone CLI applications in PHP
• explore PHP language implementation with a custom VM instruction set

When to choose

• you want to experiment with PHP beyond web development with async and coroutine support
• you need a research or educational project on language runtime and compiler design
• you want a PHP runtime stripped of deprecated legacy features

When to avoid

• you need a production-ready PHP environment - the project is experimental and last released in 2020
• you need full compatibility with the official PHP ecosystem and extensions
• you want stable, well-supported tooling for running PHP applications today

Facets

cli-tool · maturity abandoned

compiler interpreter concurrency package-manager documentation programming-languages compilers developer-tools backend cpp cross-platform php-runtime zendvm libpdk polarvm general-purpose-scripting async-runtime programming-language linux docker

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="polarphp/polarphp")