PeachPie, a groundbreaking project that enables the PHP language to run natively on the .NET runtime, has officially reached its 1.0.0 release. This milestone introduces a range of new features designed to make it easier for developers to integrate PHP with the .NET ecosystem. With improved IDE support and user-friendly error messages, PeachPie aims to simplify the migration process for legacy PHP applications, offering an efficient way to work within the .NET environment while maintaining compatibility with PHP code.
The PeachPie project, first announced in 2016, is not just a runtime for executing PHP on .NET; it’s designed as a comprehensive development platform. Developers can incrementally migrate PHP codebases to .NET, enabling two-way interaction between PHP and .NET applications. While PeachPie supports many PHP extensions, it doesn’t cover all of them, making it important for developers to evaluate whether their specific requirements are met. This gradual migration approach helps reduce the risk and effort of replatforming legacy systems.
With the 1.0 release, PeachPie adds support for PHP 7.4, the most commonly used version of PHP. It also integrates with popular IDEs, providing a smoother development experience for users familiar with .NET tools. Additionally, the project offers an online compiler that lets developers compile PHP code into C#, Visual Basic, or .NET Intermediate Language (IL), giving them a sense of what the generated code will look like. WebAssembly compilation is also supported, expanding the versatility of PeachPie for modern web applications.
Although PeachPie does not yet make extensive performance claims, initial benchmarks suggest promising results. Compared to traditional PHP runtimes and Facebook’s HHVM (HipHop Virtual Machine), PeachPie delivers better performance in some cases. For further optimization, PeachPie leverages ahead-of-time compilation through its NativeAOT tool, which can significantly boost performance, especially for PHP code that includes type hints, enabling more precise optimizations. While results may vary depending on the workload and the specific PHP code, PeachPie’s 1.0 release represents a significant step forward in bridging the PHP and .NET worlds.