The new way to install PHP - an interview with the creator of getPHP

[00:00:00]Welcome to this fun-packed little interview, conversation, exchange of ideas. Call it what you will, but today we are joined by the great Balage Zatik. He happens to be the creator of a new thing called GetPHP, and I'm really curious to find out about this. Now, by the way, yes, he does look after the Tron Gate framework and uh we are good friends, I like to think uh and we are very much batting on the same team. However, I want you folks to know a couple of things here. I'm not involved in get PHP. I don't have a horse in the race and as well as that, my integrity will not allow an ass kissing exercise. So, I'm going to be well, I'm not going to be tough, but I am going to be, let's just say, inquiring, questioning, finding out a little bit more about this new project by the name of get PHP.

[00:01:05]So, Balage, would you like to tell us about get PHP?

[00:01:11]Well, hello Dave and thanks for having me on the channel.

[00:01:15]Yes, I created Get PHP about I started developing get PHP about six months ago because I really felt like there was a need for a tool that replaces ZAMP M and all those outdated PHP installers because I think PHP itself is a great language.

[00:01:44]It's dependable, reliable, it's fast, modern, but we really lack a tool that allows everybody to install PHP easily that no matter if they are on Linux, Windows on Mac or Mac OS. So I played around with Homebrew and I have my Linux experience as well. So I started developing it just for myself but it turned out to be so good that I felt the need to share it with the PHP community.

[00:02:25]So I have the getphp.org domain.

[00:02:30]>> Mhm.

[00:02:31]>> Created the website put it put everything up on GitHub. It's completely free and open source. Anybody can look into the code, try it, and let's see where this takes us. I think this is just the beginning of a nice journey.

[00:02:52]Well, thank you for that. I mean, I don't know what counts as success these days. But if it's really fast, is it fast, Balage?

[00:03:04]>> Yes, it is.

[00:03:05]>> Is it easy to use?

[00:03:08]It's I made it so si I made it.

[00:03:11]>> Oh, give me give me one line. It's a gag. Come on, just say yes.

[00:03:15]Yes. Well, it's going to fail.

[00:03:17][laughter] >> Yeah, he's the fastest.

[00:03:20]>> Let's face it, web development is not a meritocracy, especially PHP.

[00:03:25]Um, and I learned that the hard way. I have the scars to prove it. Apologies for me goofing around and interrupting you, Balage. Um, you were saying actually before I rudely interrupted that it's the installation. Am I right in saying it's a line of code or something you put?

[00:03:43]>> Yeah, the installation is quite different from what you might be used to because with get PHP, you don't have to install the thing itself. You just run a command in your terminal and get PHP lives entirely in the computer's memory for a fraction of a second and nothing gets installed unless you type install and then it orchestrates everything and installs Apache, MySQL, PHP, PHP, myAdmin from all the official sources.

[00:04:21]But there is no installer per se like with ZAM that you download a 100 megabyte file and then run an installer.

[00:04:33]There's nothing like that.

[00:04:36]>> Okay. It's it's the part of it not installing something that I just can't get my head around.

[00:04:42]>> Presumably, it installs PHP and MySQL on your computer.

[00:04:46]>> Of course, it installs.

[00:04:48]>> I see what you're saying. But get >> Yeah. But get PHP itself is not an installer, >> right?

[00:04:53]>> It's like a manager or a dashboard.

[00:04:56]>> That's totally cool. So when it when it installs them, presumably it starts them up as well.

[00:05:02]>> Yeah. It starts everything up, starts all the services, processes, >> sets up all the configuration files. You don't have to do anything manually.

[00:05:14]It's literally just one command.

[00:05:17]>> Okay. So, let's imagine somebody runs it and I'm I'm genuinely I'm just trying to figure how it works, right? So, somebody's got a brand new computer and they run get PHP, right? Get PHP is going to get the latest version of PHP and MySQL and PHP MyAdmin.

[00:05:41]>> Yes, exactly. All >> All of that stuff and Apache as well.

[00:05:45]and Apache >> of course right >> you don't even you don't even have to know how it works you just the the only thing you have to know let's say you have a new computer >> y >> you sit down >> you know that you need your PHP development environment set up you can go the the hard way the old way >> I wouldn't recommend that to anyone >> okay here's yeah pardon me go on >> you just go to getphp.org or >> yeah, >> there are three operating systems. You you select the one you need, copy the command, click one button, you pull up your terminal, paste in the command, and hit return on your keyboard. So, that's all you have to really know.

[00:06:32]>> That That's awesome. What I was meaning is when you later go back to your computer 3 weeks later >> Mhm.

[00:06:39]>> what happens then? Cuz at that point, you've got the stuff on your computer, right?

[00:06:44]>> Yeah. You've got everything running on your computer. You don't have to play around in the terminal anymore if you don't want to. You can leave it like that for five, six months. It It doesn't get in your way. It will run in the background. I mean, the Apache service, the MySQL service, they will run in the background. The only time you have to run the command again and open up get PHP if you want to stop these services because you're not developing anymore or you don't need them to run in the background or you want to update the packages for example you want a new PHP version installed >> but otherwise you don't have to worry about a thing.

[00:07:32]>> Okay. So, it sounds like you're saying that you literally run the command once on your computer.

[00:07:40]>> Mhm.

[00:07:40]>> And that's you. Like 6 months later, you can switch your computer on and you never have to type in get PHP again.

[00:07:49]>> Yeah, exactly.

[00:07:50]>> Is that right?

[00:07:51]>> Yes, it's right.

[00:07:52]>> Wow.

[00:07:54]only if you want to do some management with your stack like restarting services, stopping, updating, or if you want to delete the entire thing. And by the way, I made deleting the entire thing very easy to it's just one command. You type delete, hit enter, and it will remove everything.

[00:08:17]But you will keep it will keep your all of your website files and MySQL databases.

[00:08:24]So you won't lose any data, but the stack will be removed.

[00:08:29]>> It sounds awesome. I mean, I love the simplicity. Not that my opinion counts for much, right? Who could not love the simplicity? I mean, ZAMP seems to be, as far as I can tell, an abandoned project lately. And not only that, but it's just hassle. Uh you're constantly using these old versions of PHP. The installation process itself is well, it takes a while and it's sometimes it can be a bit awkward. I've had one or two instances where I've downloaded the wrong thing and stuff like that. So, get PHP certainly solves that. And I love the simplicity. Congratulations.

[00:09:09]the thing that I'm going to use my incredible powers of telepathy and I'm going to speculate that the thing that you think is get PHP's greatest weakness is probably in my opinion its greatest strength you know and that is the fact that um it gives the latest version of PHP but I would I be correct in saying that you can't easily switch versions of PHP on it.

[00:09:41]>> Uh, not in an automate automated way.

[00:09:44]>> Good. Doesn't >> Please keep that. Right. Keep that.

[00:09:50]That's the bit that I like. That's my favorite feature of all. Please do not give anybody the ability to change PHP version. I don't want it, but nobody should have it. It would be terrible.

[00:10:07]So, congratulations on that feature. And shall I tell you why?

[00:10:12]>> Yes. Yes, please.

[00:10:14]>> Because PHP has been hijacked by people who make large piles of cash from a thing called, let's all say it together, rewrite culture.

[00:10:29]>> Culture, right? And we could do a 4hour video talking about all of the different ways that they do this. And one of the things that these particular people have done, these self-appointed code police types.

[00:10:51]One of the things that they've done is they've tried to push PHP in a direction where it's like NodeJS where it gets updated constantly and changes constantly. And I've looked at the conferences online and I could show you the videos and they're trying desperately to make PHP like that. Now, if you happen to be in charge of a project like Electron, then maybe even NodeJS, please update the thing frequently. We need those updates because a technology like Electron has to keep up with all of the different operating systems, things of that nature, right? You could say the same for uh something like um Cotlin or something like that.

[00:11:43]These things need to keep up with all of the changes that are happening in the different operating systems. So that's cool. But PHP is not like that by my estimation.

[00:11:57]PHP was built on the C programming language or using the C programming language which is the same language that gets used in Elon's rockets.

[00:12:08]built for stability, built for literally going to the moon. You know, I think the M1 Abraham, is it Abrahams or Abrahams?

[00:12:19]Those fancy tanks, they use C, you know, it's a solid, stable technology. And I think that it it was a shame that PHP developers normalized the frequent flipping of versions and made that normal. Do you know what I mean? We shouldn't make it normal.

[00:12:44]>> We shouldn't make it normal.

[00:12:46]>> And you know, I I won't turn this into a rant, but by my estimation, PHP should be like Python.

[00:12:57]stable. You know, Python came out when Freddy Mercury and the gang were recording the Miracle album.

[00:13:08]He was in great shape, you know. That's when Python came out. And I do believe that they're only on version three.

[00:13:16]That's what PHP should be like. And look at the success Python's having, by the way. I mean, it's at the forefront of all the AI stuff everybody wants to know. learn Python. I bet you know people have switched to learning Python.

[00:13:31]But PHP went this other direction and they've tried to normalize rewrite culture. They've tried to normalize reversioning stuff.

[00:13:43][ __ ] them all. Balage.

[00:13:46]That's what I say. So congratulations on that feature. It's a great feature and I salute you.

[00:13:54]>> Yeah. But you know, let me tell you an interesting thing. I keep I get not more I would say I get more than one email every single day through the get PHP website where people are asking me, well, how do I switch PHP versions? Why don't you put a PHP switcher in in there? I want to use a different MySQL version. How do I do that? Why doesn't it support it?

[00:14:27]>> Yeah.

[00:14:28]>> And I and I keep telling them that's not my vision for the get PHP project.

[00:14:34]>> Yes.

[00:14:35]>> It's it's literally like a plugandplay thing. It's not about configurations.

[00:14:40]It's not for system administrators. It's for PHP developers who wants who want to get the job done >> and it helps with that.

[00:14:51]So it's definitely not for everyone.

[00:14:55]It's I would say it serves well about 90% of PHP developers out there. But anyone who wants to play around with PHP versions, wants to use a different uh database uh editor visual tool or someone who needs a custom configuration, it's not for them.

[00:15:19]>> Yeah.

[00:15:20]And um to anybody who asked that question, please direct them to this video. And uh you know cuz this this whole version reversioning soap opera is a croc. It has to be called out. Um I was I was reading just the other day, forgive me Balage, we we we can talk hopefully as friends here. I was reading the other day that um CakePHHP is now planning for version 6 and apparently it's only going to work with PHP 8.4 onwards.

[00:15:59]So unless I'm very much mistaken, they've just made it so that the framework will not work on the majority of shared hosting platforms. They're going to be using some syntax. I think it's to do with function headers, just a wild guess. But they're going to be using some new PHP syntax that nobody needs and nobody really cares about. And they're going to call it modern.

[00:16:26]This is the game balage. Do you hear what I'm saying?

[00:16:30]>> Yeah.

[00:16:32]>> Exactly.

[00:16:33]you know, most most modern PHP frameworks, they I wouldn't even try to run them on a shared hosting >> Yeah.

[00:16:44]>> platform, just on a VPS or dedicated server. And I think that's that's the wrong direction because many entrepreneurs or business startups use PHP and they don't necessarily want to start up on a $100 uh VPS or dedicated server. It's complete, especially with a >> bare metal framework or just with plain PHP, it's completely fine to start out on a5 or $10 shared hosting plan. It will work.

[00:17:17]>> Yeah.

[00:17:18]>> Fine. And it will serve thousands of customers.

[00:17:21]>> Yeah.

[00:17:22]>> Yeah.

[00:17:23]>> So, >> well, I happen to think that change is in the air, balage, you know, and I I love the simplicity of it and I would just appeal to you. Look, I don't have a horse in the race here, you know. I don't even know how it works actually.

[00:17:40]But I hope that you keep that simplicity bal you know and I hope that you don't add version switching. Version switching is [ __ ] ladies and gentlemen that's a fact as far as I'm concerned.

[00:17:56]Uh PHP is a solved problem. It's really not that complicated. You know there's not much to talk about here. we've kind of figured this stuff out and it can exist as a nice stable, fast, and easy to use language. I think what you've done is fantastic. Uh, we need a movement for it. I did have a criticism.

[00:18:16]I can't remember what it Oh, yeah.

[00:18:18]Here's my one criticism. Okay, I'm going to lay it on you, but I hope you'll count this as a feature request and not a criticism as such. Okay. Um, I don't know how easy it would be to build this, but based on everything you've told me, there's literally one reservation I've got, and that is how do you switch it off?

[00:18:44]>> With just one command, you type stop and hit enter.

[00:18:48]>> Oh, you've built that?

[00:18:50]>> Yeah. Yeah. The the way you stop is that you stop the services.

[00:18:56]>> Okay. So that's literally the one thing you have to do. You open up, you run the command, it runs the get PHP script >> and it it shows you all the commands you have available.

[00:19:08]So we are at at zero. Nothing is installed.

[00:19:15]Let's say I I got this computer and it's brand new. What do I do?

[00:19:23]I go to getphp.org.

[00:19:26]And I'm on a Mac, so I choose this option here. It works with Apple Silicon with M1 chips and later, >> so it's good for me.

[00:19:39]>> I'm going to copy this command.

[00:19:41]>> It's copied to the clipboard. I pull up my terminal and just paste in the command. And now I hit enter. Nothing will be installed right now. Okay, >> I just hit enter and see the the entire dashboard loaded. Here's your PHP stack.

[00:19:59]Apache, MySQL, PHP, PHP my my admin.

[00:20:03]Nothing is installed.

[00:20:06]Services are not running and not available.

[00:20:09]>> Yeah.

[00:20:09]>> And here are the commands you can use.

[00:20:12]You can install the PHP stack.

[00:20:15]>> Wow. you can update to to the latest versions if you if you're a PHP developer.

[00:20:23]>> Yeah.

[00:20:24]>> Then you can you can always use the latest versions.

[00:20:29]And here here are the commands for restarting and stopping the services.

[00:20:34]These are the services that run in the background. The Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

[00:20:40]>> Yep.

[00:20:40]>> And and here's the delete command. it it will show you what gets deleted and what not. So, I didn't even make a documentation for this thing because it's so simple to use. That was my goal.

[00:20:56]You just run it and see what's going on and all right, what do I want to do now?

[00:21:03]I want to install everything. So, I'm just going to type install and hit return. And it creates all the directories, starts downloading stuff, everything you need.

[00:21:16]It will ask questions. You want to proceed. Yes. Maybe it will ask for the admin password, but other than that, it's completely automated.

[00:21:29]See, I just say yes.

[00:21:30]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:31]>> And it and it it will be done in a minute or two. It doesn't take too long.

[00:21:39]Okay. Yes, I want to proceed.

[00:21:41]>> Yep. I'm trying to figure out where does it install to.

[00:21:46]>> Uh, it installs into on Mac OS. It installs into your homebrew directory.

[00:21:53]It's it's outside of your uh users directory. It's inside the OPT directory.

[00:22:03]You you don't even have to know about this thing. I mean, unless you're really curious. See, it's installed everything.

[00:22:10]It's done. So, my PHP stack currently is Apache 2.4 MySQL, PHP, PHP MyAdmin, everything is installed and the services are running. So, if I if now I go to go back to localhost and open PHP myadmin, it works.

[00:22:32]>> Okay. So, so >> so and if you want to stop these, let's say, okay, I'm going to quit now. So, if I type quit or just hit the Q button and enter, then it it exits and everything is everything is closed, but the services are running in the background. So, you can still >> I see.

[00:22:59]>> So, you don't have to do anything from now on. If I close the terminal and don't open it up for the next six months, I can still use PHP 8.5 and PHP myin and everything.

[00:23:14]And so what happens if you want to if you want to stop the services because you need all the resources on your computer. Okay. So let's say six months passed, you forgot everything. and you don't know what's how you installed.

[00:23:33]The only thing you have to remember is get PHP. Go to the website.

[00:23:38]>> Yeah.

[00:23:39]>> Hopefully you remember your operating system which one you need.

[00:23:44]>> Yeah.

[00:23:44]>> So, you just copy the command, pull up your terminal, paste in the command, and hit enter. And it will show you what is installed and what is running right now.

[00:23:56]And if you want to stop these services, you just type stop.

[00:24:02]>> See, here is the command.

[00:24:04]>> Yep.

[00:24:04]>> Stop all PHP stack services. You hit return and it stops the Apache, MySQL, and PHP services. Takes a few seconds.

[00:24:19]So, it closes everything down in the background. And now you can see these services are stopped.

[00:24:29]So everything is still there but nothing's running in the background.

[00:24:35]Let let me prove it. If you go to go back to PHP myadmin, see it's it's not working anymore because the service stopped. There's no MySQL service.

[00:24:46]There's no web server running in the background. Nothing.

[00:24:49]>> Wow. Wow. And let's say you want to Okay, I'm going to quit. Now, >> does this mean that opening the or running the get PHP command effectively brings up a dashboard from which you can do all of this stuff, right?

[00:25:05]>> Yeah. Let's say you come back from your holiday and you want to restart everything. You restart the services.

[00:25:11]You want to start working again.

[00:25:13]>> Yeah.

[00:25:14]>> So, you can either go to getphp.org or and copy the command. Or if you know some terminal tricks like pressing the up arrow, it will get you the last command you >> used. You can search in your history and you just hit enter. You see that okay I have everything installed. These are stopped.

[00:25:39]>> I want to start working. So I just type type restart. Hit enter and it will restart all the services and see they are running and now you can start working. Okay, close the window.

[00:26:05]Okay, I want to talk to the listeners.

[00:26:10]Folks, I'm not very good at doing interviews. I know that. Um, and uh, sometimes when I ask stupid questions, I feel like a Kentucky Fried idiot. But I want you to know something. I came into this thinking I'm not going to give him a hard time, but I'm going to raise one or two little objections or raise a few questions, let's say. Um, and I can see that they've all been addressed before I even thought of them.

[00:26:42]And I want to go on the record right now as saying if there has been a better innovation in the PHP community for the last decade that is more impressive than this than I don't know what it is.

[00:27:02]I've used PHP since 2003 and what you have just built here, Bage, is absolutely incredible. It might even be perfect.

[00:27:16]The perfection is hidden perfection.

[00:27:20]That's what I love best about it. I don't want to fuff about with this person's on that PHP and this person's on that and somebody else is on that.

[00:27:29]This tool gives you the latest version.

[00:27:32]And you saw how easy it was. I'll tell you something.

[00:27:38]I'm going to use that tonight. I'm going to be using it tonight. Balage. I think it's absolutely fantastic. Congratulations.

[00:27:50]>> Thank you. By all means, give it a go.

[00:27:52]And I haven't even showed you the delete functionality. So, it's just as fast.

[00:27:58]You just type delete and it removes the entire stack but all your data remains on your computer. So if you reinstall it two months later or two hours later you will get back to the exact same position you were.

[00:28:15]>> That's amazing. It's amazing. Um listen another thing I'll say just to the listeners by the way do give this project a star on GitHub. Um I know from experience it really helps. Right, Balage.

[00:28:28]>> Yes, I'd appreciate it.

[00:28:29]>> It really really helps by giving this project I'll put the GitHub um address in the description actually. And uh do give this project a star on GitHub.

[00:28:41]Don't just watch the video and disappear or try it and disappear. Give this a star because this is the type of thinking that PHP needs. We need to get back to simplicity. We need to get back to the light, you know, and I believe I really do believe, Balage, that um we stand at the precipice of a great PHP reset. That's what I'm calling this.

[00:29:09]It's the great PHP reset.

[00:29:12]And best thing of all, it works on all three major operating systems. It was a lot of work. So, it looks and works the same. No matter if you're on Mac OS, Linux, or Windows, the dashboard will look exactly the same down to the characters and the colors, everything. I made sure you you use the same commands.

[00:29:39]So, if you switch computers is the same experience.

[00:29:44]>> I love Of course, in the in the background, it's different, but >> the user interface is >> is 100% the same.

[00:29:53]>> I really love it. I love it. Balage, I don't know what to tell you. Um I I thought that I'd come away and have a few little things and stuff, but there's stuff that you've built there that I was going to bring up and I'm like, "Oh, it does that." So, you're 50 steps ahead of us all. I think it's fantastic and I I don't know what more to tell you. I'll be using that tonight.

[00:30:15]>> Thank you, Dave.

[00:30:16]>> All right. Catch you later, folks. Bye.