Question

I know that PHP is an interpreted language and for web-based things, isn’t designed for running GUI applications on actual OSs, but is there a way?

Basically, is there a framework / system that allows me to create “native” (basically, binary, .exe, looks like a Win32 app with the native controls and all) windows, GUI-based applications?

So I could code a PHP app with such framework, and (somehow) compile it into an .exe, and distribute it as a normal windows application. Possible?

I could use VS/.NET , C# and all, but using PHP would allow me to reuse an internal framework for many extra functions, shortening the development cycle a lot.

So, is there such a way to do it?

Answer 1

The best solution if you have knowledge of .Net would be to use Phalanger (Blog) which basically compile php code to the .Net intermediate language and allow you to access all standard .Net libraries (including WPF and WinForms so you could create GUIs)

The more modern version of this project is now called PeachPie.