php-src docs

Welcome to the php-src documentation!

Warning

This documentation is work in progress.

At this point in time, there are other guides that provide a more complete picture of the PHP project. Check the CONTRIBUTING.md file for a list of technical resources.

php-src is the canonical implementation of the interpreter for the PHP programming language, as well as various extensions that provide common functionality. This documentation is intended to help you understand how the interpreter works, how you can build and test changes, and how you can create extensions yourself.

This documentation is not intended to be comprehensive, but is meant to explain core concepts that are not easy to grasp by reading code alone. It describes best practices, and will frequently omit APIs that are discouraged for general use.

How to get help?

Getting started with a new and complicated project like php-src can be overwhelming. While there’s no way around reading lots and lots of code, asking questions of somebody with experience can save a lot of time. Luckily, many core developers are eager to help. Here are some ways you can get in touch.

Prerequisites

The php-src interpreter is written in C, and so are most of the bundled extensions. While extensions may also be written in C++, ext-intl is currently the only bundled extension to do so. It is advisable that you have some knowledge of C before jumping into php-src.

It is also advisable to get familiar with the semantics of PHP itself, so that you may better differentiate between bugs and expected behavior, and model new language features.