Question

Does anybody know of a reliable, well-made tool for creating standalone desktop applications complete with GUI, using just PHP, or primarily PHP? I enjoy the R.A.D. and many other aspects of PHP and would like to use it for some non server/client projects.

Answer 1

UPDATE:

The Roadsend PHP project, which I plugged in my original answer back in 2010, appears to be a dead project. For what it’s worth, you can find the source and a couple of spin-off projects at:

https://github.com/weyrick/roadsend-php

For anyone looking for an answer to this question, my first suggestion would be to look into a modern cross-platform GUI development platform — personally I like Java + Apache Pivot.

But whether you take my suggestion, or are committed to PHP-GTK, my IDE recommendation’s the same: You’ll want to try out NetBeans and possibly Eclipse. Both are powerful IDE’s well-suited for development on either of the aforementioned platforms.

Original Answer:

Yes!

Roadsend PHP

http://www.roadsend.com/home/index.php?pageID=compiler [dead link]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadsend_PHP [dead link]

More information from the Roadsend site:

Build Stand Alone Applications From Standard PHP Source Code

Roadsend compiles your PHP project to a single, native binary which
does not require an interpreter. Roadsend builds online web
applications with FastCGI, offline web applications with an embedded
web server (MicroServer), desktop GUI applications with PHP-GTK, and
more! Supports Windows, Unix, and Mac OS X.

NEW: PHP 5 compatible since version 2.9.3

Roadsend Studio IDE

Roadsend Studio helps you manage, build, debug and deploy your PHP
projects with the Roadsend Compiler. It automatically deploys a
finished project to a directory (included supporting libraries), ready
for packaging. It examines your code as you type, has early syntax
error recognition, auto method and property completion and auto
parameter help. Full syntax highlighting editor, project source file
manager, step debugger and compiling and interpreting of projects
(including GUI apps) from within the IDE.

Compile Web Applications

Compile web applications for both on- and offline use. Online web
applications use the standard FastCGI interface for communicating with
industry standard web servers such as Apache and Microsoft IIS.
Offline web applications use the MicroServer embedded web server,
which allows you to run an web application as a stand alone program.

Compile Desktop GUI Applications The Roadsend Compiler uses the GTK library for cross platform operability. It supports the Glade user
interface builder and is compatible with the PHP-GTK 1 API.

Debugger

Roadsend Compiler includes a step debugger which allows you to step
line by line through your source. You have the ability to set
breakpoints by source file or line number, pause a running program,
inspect local variables and inspect the call stack.

NEW: Step debug web applications!