Phalcon 5 alpha

[adam-rocska]

👋

Phalcon 5 alpha is out in the wild and ready for brave use with PHP 8.
But there aren't any IDE stubs published here.

Intentional?

[Jeckerson]

Hello!

Yes, I'm still working on it - phalcon/cphalcon#15362
There are 480 errors left, according to Psalm.

You can easily use v4 stubs atm.

[Jeckerson]

Update: 475 errors left :)

[adam-rocska]

Awesome! Thanks @Jeckerson !!! I guess, we'll take a look at it and see if we can contribute some smart here.

If I may permit myself a slightly unrelated question: My co-owner & CTO @rlegmann just found an article from last year, that says Phalcon 5 would be php based and zephir will be dead and gone. Now I see that (thank God) phalcon 5 seems to still be zephir based, and it's actively developed. So, what's up with the plans?

We LOVE!!! Zephir & Phalcon being a native speedy gonzales; it's one of the main reasons why we chose Phalcon besides it's pretty pro' software design aspects. But if the plan is to make Phalcon a scripted stuff, we might have to reassess some of our investments.

Any source we can dig up for some answers or commitments maybe?

[Jeckerson]

Hello @adam-rocska

zephir will be dead and gone

If you read carefully, only 1 person left. We shifted our roles during last half of year and managed to update Zephir to 0.13.x with PHP 7.4 and PHP 8.0 support.

Also, we shifted our plans to release 4.2 with PHP8.0 support, due wrong signatures in interfaces, as Phalcon complies semver, this requirement was necessary. So Phalcon with PHP8 support will be v5.0.

About Phalcon in PHP native. Due shift from 4.2 to 5.0, we also shifted PHP Phalcon to v6.0 (https://github.com/phalcon/phalcon/tree/v6.0.x).

In our plans we want to have good from both worlds: speed in Zephir/C and quality in PHP. So we will make slow shift from full C extension to hybrid solution. Where you will have whole framework in PHP (composer) and if you want speed - just install extension.
Simple case with CLI commands:

composer require phalcon/phalcon
pecl install phalcon-ext

If you will execute 2nd command, it will start to use classes from extension and not from PHP files.
Working example you can check here - https://github.com/RubixML/Tensor#tensor-php

The transition between full C extension framework to hybrid will done slowly to make sure that every step we made correctly.
Phalcon v5.0 will be supported at least until PHP8.1 which is until end of 2024 (according to https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php)

[blackjyn]

I really wish Phalcon will always be delivered as extension rather than in PHP classes.
Coz, when it was an ext I just need to install that ext and voila, everything set and ready.

BUT when delivered as PHP classes?
Oh man, autoload.this autolaod.that, deps on this , deps on that. etc etc.

I'll be so sad if that day happened.

The fact that Phalcon is delivered in ext is what make it so special. If it was delivered in PHP classes, IMHO it is no longer special.

[Jeckerson]

@blackjyn Just use PSR-4, it is easy and universal approach in nowadays PHP...

[adam-rocska]

Well, our conclusion became: Screw php :) we'll use a different language.
I'm sad for phalcon. It was & is a great framework, but succumbing it to the php swamps will lead to a garbaggio future.

[blackjyn]

Just use PSR-4, it is easy and universal approach in nowadays PHP...

We don't want universal approach when the special approach has already served us so fuckin well

[Jeckerson]

https://github.com/phalcon/ide-stubs/releases