Suggesting Build Process for PHP Projects

[mbpcoder]

Proposal: Optimized Build Process for PHP Projects

Background

In modern PHP development, applications often rely on conditional dependencies—for example:

• Multiple payment gateways (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, local providers).
• Logging handlers (e.g., Monolog with different channels).
• Feature-specific packages that may not be required in every deployment.

However, in most cases not all features are used in production. As a result, deployments often include a significant amount of unused code, which can lead to:

• Larger bundle sizes and slower deployments.
• Increased load times and memory usage.
• Higher security risk from exposed but inactive components.

Proposal

I propose the adoption of a standardized build process for PHP projects that ensures only the necessary code and dependencies are included in production.

Goals

• Remove Unused Code

  • Automatically detect and exclude files, classes, and dependencies not referenced in the configuration/environment.
  • Exclude development-only packages.

• Optimize for Production

  • Merge and minify PHP files where possible.
  • Strip unnecessary whitespace and comments.
  • Optimize autoload maps to include only required classes.

Benefits

• Smaller production artifacts → faster deployments and reduced server storage.
• Improved performance → leaner code means faster request handling and reduced memory footprint.
• Enhanced security → unused features are not shipped, minimizing potential vulnerabilities.

By standardizing this build process, PHP projects can ship with only what they need—nothing more, nothing less.