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PHP Nano

php-nano is TypePHP's small native runtime. It preserves the PHP/Zend names and data structures needed by PHPX while removing the PHP interpreter, Zend VM, SAPI, and general operating-system service APIs. Its sources are compiled directly into a TypePHP native executable in place of libphp.

The compiler remains a build-time tool: PHP, Composer, and nikic/php-parser are not linked into the generated native program.

Runtime composition

• PHP 8.6 zval, zend_string, Bucket, and zend_array definitions;
• PHP 8.6 implementations of strings, HashTable, variables, sorting, operators, numeric conversion, GC, and resource lists; the allocator keeps Zend's API and algorithms but selects a POSIX aligned-allocation backend instead of the upstream mmap/page-management backend;
• native class metadata and zend_call_function-compatible virtual method dispatch through compiler-generated C++ trampolines;
• PHP output buffering with a native/WASI console writer;
• PHP's stream core, including local file wrappers and source-selectable URI, socket transport, HTTP, FTP, and TLS support;
• PHP 8.6 timelib and DateTime APIs, with clocks and sleeps supplied through the C++17 standard library;
• generated target configuration plus the original PHP 8.6 php.h;
• direct native and wasm32-wasip2 source builds;
• no application dependency beyond the selected C/C++ toolchain runtime.

PHP Nano vendors php-src extension source trees directly, including Core, date, hash, json, pcre, random, Reflection, SPL, standard, filter, URI, curl, and OpenSSL. TypePHP selects only the components used by a program and the transitive dependencies declared in composer.json; merely being present in php-nano does not add an extension to an executable. Extensions that are not part of php-src are installed with PIE as vendor packages. The final extension set is fixed at build time; dynamic libraries and runtime extension loading are not supported. The Zend INI registry and module-defined settings are retained, while automatic discovery/loading of php.ini remains disabled. Application file access does not imply runtime configuration or extension discovery.

The ctype_* functions are compiler intrinsics backed directly by PHPX and the C++ standard character-classification API. They do not require or register PHP's ctype extension.

PHPX high-precision values use the normal GMP, MPFR, and mpdecimal backends in a regular build. Nano instead compiles PHP 8.6's bundled libbcmath source as a private fallback backend, without registering the public bcmath extension or adding an external library dependency. Its documented precision differences are listed in SUPPORTED.md.

The normative dependency and capability rules are in CONSTRAINTS.md; its Native POSIX baseline, WASI subset, and forbidden host capabilities are defined in PORTABILITY_ALLOWLIST.md. See EXTENSIONS.md for the Composer package contract and upstream-source policy.

PHP Nano does not contain a copied PHPX facade. Composer installs the normal swoole/phpx sources beside this package. TypePHP compiles those sources with PHPX_NANO, which removes APIs such as eval, include, and require while keeping the existing PHPX value classes and implementation.

Build integration

This package deliberately has no independent production build system. It is installed by Composer and publishes an exact native source manifest in composer.json. TypePHP loads the listed sources directly into the application's source set. It compiles PHP .c files as C11, compiles PHPX and generated TypePHP sources as C++17, and performs the final link with the C++ linker.

The repository's CMakeLists.txt is only a CI/developer test harness. It reads the same Composer manifest, validates that every listed source exists, and compiles the dependency-free core into the php-nano-runtime test archive. Network transports, curl, and OpenSSL are selected and built by the consuming TypePHP application because their native SDKs are target-specific. Host builds also link php-nano-smoke and run it through CTest; WASI Preview 2 links the same smoke program and executes it with Wasmtime. iOS and Android CI compile-check the core archive without trying to execute a cross-compiled program. The smoke executable uses a non-dispatching test host for the two dynamic-call ABI hooks that PHPX implements in a real TypePHP program. It is not installed or invoked by TypePHP applications. There is no CMake, Autoconf, Automake, configure, or intermediate runtime archive in the native application build path. The current TypePHP source builder exposes the host-native and wasm32-wasip2 targets. CI exercises Linux and macOS host builds, WASI Preview 2 build/execution, plus iPhoneOS arm64 and Android arm64-v8a cross-compilation. Windows is intentionally not a php-nano runtime target: TypePHP uses its full PHP/PHPX DLL distribution and applies the Nano restrictions in the compiler.

No php-src tests/ directory or .phpt file is shipped. Nano's own small C++ smoke tests remain because they validate the source manifest and runtime ABI.

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