After kicking the tires for six months, Facebook thinks its HipHop PHP runtime is ready for prime time. The social networking colossus says it's aiming to bring the open source project to scale, rather than fork the language.

Developer.com hears from Facebook's open programs manager on details of the release, which includes a new Web server.

The open source dynamic scripting language PHP is widely deployed across the Web, powering countless Web sites (including the Internet.com network). Now Facebook is aiming to change the game with today's release of a major new PHP effort called HipHop.

With HipHop, Facebook is providing a new runtime that is intended to improve PHP use in large-scale deployments. The HipHop effort, which also includes a new Web server, has already been in use by Facebook for the past six months, though the project is just being made public today.

Facebook developers say the HipHop effort isn't an attempt to fork the PHP community, but rather, a move to help PHP scale.

"There are two different pieces to keep in mind, one is the PHP language itself, then there is the runtime that actually goes and interprets the language and runs it," David Recordon, Facebook's senior open programs manager, told InternetNews.com. "What we've done is we've implemented the PHP 5.2 language with a few features removed. Our plan is to keep the language the same, but what we've changed is the underlying runtime and the process of going and transforming the source code into C++ and then compiling it and pushing out the compiled binary."

Read the full story at Developer.com:
Facebook's HipHop Goes Public With a New PHP Runtime