README

NTS-hosted wrapper around pecl/parallel that runs through sj-i/ffi-zts.

Gives a plain non-thread-safe PHP CLI access to real OS-thread parallelism via parallel\Runtime, without replacing the system PHP build. See docs/DESIGN.md in the core package for the full design.

Install

composer require sj-i/ffi-zts-parallel

Both sj-i/ffi-zts and sj-i/ffi-zts-parallel ship as Composer plugins. On install, each downloads the pre-built binary matching your host's PHP minor / CPU arch / libc:

vendor/sj-i/ffi-zts/bin/libphp.so
vendor/sj-i/ffi-zts-parallel/bin/extensions/ffi-zts/parallel.so

Trusting the plugins

Composer 2.2+ asks you to trust a new plugin before running it. In interactive shells you get a (y/N) prompt on first install. In CI / non-interactive environments, whitelist both up front:

composer config allow-plugins.sj-i/ffi-zts true
composer config allow-plugins.sj-i/ffi-zts-parallel true
composer require sj-i/ffi-zts-parallel

Manual install / retry

If either plugin was skipped (--no-plugins, network outage, binary not yet published for a new PHP minor), retry the binary fetch on demand from the root project:

vendor/bin/ffi-zts install   # fetches libphp.so
# parallel.so is re-fetched on the next `composer update sj-i/ffi-zts-parallel`.

Usage

<?php
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use SjI\FfiZts\Parallel\Parallel;

Parallel::boot()
    ->runScript(__DIR__ . '/worker.php');

A minimal worker.php that fans out four parallel\Runtimes inside the embed:

<?php
$futures = [];
for ($i = 0; $i < 4; $i++) {
    $rt        = new parallel\Runtime();
    $futures[] = $rt->run(function (int $id): array {
        $sum = 0;
        for ($j = 0; $j < 2_000_000; $j++) $sum += $j;
        return ['id' => $id, 'pid' => getmypid(), 'zts' => PHP_ZTS, 'sum' => $sum];
    }, [$i]);
}
foreach ($futures as $f) {
    print_r($f->value());
}

All four workers report the same pid (same process) and zts=true (running in the embedded ZTS interpreter).

opcache.preload (2.x / PHP 8.5)

PHP 8.5 links opcache statically into libphp.so, so opcache.preload works under the embed out of the box and the preloaded classes / functions propagate into every parallel\Runtime worker thread:

Parallel::boot()
    ->withIniEntry('opcache.enable_cli',  '1')
    ->withIniEntry('opcache.preload',     __DIR__ . '/preload.php')
    ->withIniEntry('opcache.preload_user', get_current_user())
    ->runScript(__DIR__ . '/worker.php');

See docs/PERFORMANCE.md in the core repo for fork-vs-embed measurements.

Read-only / containerised environments

If the vendor directory is not writable at runtime (baked into a container image, mounted read-only, etc.), Parallel::bootInMemory() skips the disk cache and patches + loads parallel.so via memfd_create(2):

Parallel::bootInMemory()->runScript('worker.php');

Versioning

Major tracks the host PHP minor:

ffi-zts-parallel 1.x targets PHP 8.4 (host NTS / embedded ZTS).
ffi-zts-parallel 2.x targets PHP 8.5 and picks up upstream's static opcache for out-of-box opcache.preload.

Minor / patch tracks upstream parallel releases plus wrapper fixes; bumping just the parallel version is composer update sj-i/ffi-zts-parallel.

Requirements

Linux x86_64 or aarch64, glibc 2.31+
Host NTS PHP matching the major you install -- 1.x needs PHP 8.4, 2.x needs PHP 8.5 -- with ext-ffi enabled
Composer 2.2+

macOS, Windows, and musl are out of scope for the currently supported major lines; see the design doc for why.

sj-i / ffi-zts-parallel

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