Saying Goodbye to PXP

Over the past couple of years, PXP has been a passion project of mine – something I've poured countless hours into, driven by the idea of pushing the PHP ecosystem and development experience in new and exciting ways. What started as way of learning Rust 3 or 4 years ago eventually became this mammoth of a project, in terms of code and ambition.

It's been incredibly rewarding to see the ideas behind the project excite people. I've attended various conferences over the last couple of years and have always had a couple of people ask me about the project, and the answer has always been "I'm working on it, when I've got time."

As much as I enjoy working on PXP, I've reached a point now where it simply doesn't make much sense to continue working on it. I don't have the time to give it the attention it deserves. Software projects, especially ones as ambitious as this, require consistent effort, maintenance and iteration. When you're the only one driving the effort, it becomes hard to give it all of that alongside work and life.

All of that isn't to say that I've lost interest in the ideas behind PXP. Far from it! I still believe in the potential of tools written in languages other than PHP and I'm excited by others working on similar things. There are some fantastic projects out there tackling similar problems – whether it's static analysis tools, language servers, or faster web servers. If you're looking for alternatives, I'd encourage you to check out Mago. Saif was one of the earlier contributors to my original PHP parser project in Rust and had a tonne of impact on the project. They're now working hard on Mago and can dedicate much more time to the project. Odds are I'll probably contribute to Mago myself too in the future!

Ceasing development on PXP wasn't an easy decision to make. Ideas for the project have been looming around in my mind constantly and it's super frustrating not being able to bring said ideas to life.

Who knows – maybe one day, the ideas behind PXP will resurface in another form, whether it's from myself or from likeminded developers. But for now, it's time to call it a day.

Instead of deleting the repository entirely, I've archived it under my personal GitHub account for others to reference if needed. Everything is MIT licensed, so please feel free to use some of the code from the project as long as it adheres to the licensing.

Thank you to everyone who was interested in the project, contributed along the way, and asked how it was going.

– Ryan