Will the TrueAsync RFC Survive PHP 8.7? A Candid Outlook on Its Future
The author reflects on outreach efforts for the TrueAsync PHP async library, explains why the RFC is unlikely to be accepted—citing community misunderstanding and lack of support—and confirms the project will continue to a 1.0 release despite limited resources and shifting focus to Python.
Will the TrueAsync RFC be voted through in the next year or at least in PHP 8.7?
Answer: No. The RFC will not pass, with about a 90% chance of rejection.
Main reason: The project lacks community support, and its core philosophy is not embraced.
Very few people in the PHP community understand its purpose or the benefits of transparent async. Many confuse TrueAsync with multithreading or with colored functions, even key figures in PHP media share this confusion. It appears the RFC has either not been read or is written so poorly that the key points remain unclear.
The outreach efforts have not yielded meaningful results. The author admits the marketing failed, deliberately choosing to bet on product quality rather than marketing due to resource constraints.
The author had hoped developers would appreciate a well‑thought‑out, coherent API that lets them keep existing code while writing sequential code that runs asynchronously—the "holy grail" of "it’s as simple as that." However, merely implementing the idea was insufficient; something else is missing, which the author does not have.
Second reason: The massive TrueAsync codebase written in C is intimidating because there are no resources to review it. This objective issue could be mitigated with funding. The author notes a cognitive dissonance between "70% of languages behind the internet" and "no funding for async languages," affecting the RFC more than the code itself.
Attempts to create a working group and an ambassador program also failed for unspecified reasons.
Will the TrueAsync project be shut down?
Answer: The project will continue until version 1.0.0. It is planned and will be completed.
The API work is already finished. Since the author's company has shifted to Python, the author will enjoy developing the PHP CLAW project on top of TrueAsync, using pure PHP without threads, processes, or complex moving parts—just placing spawn on the right line. The author doubts anything similar will appear again.
Postscript: This situation is not seen as a tragedy; it is simply reality. The author accepts it. PHP still has chances to gain async capabilities, but likely in different forms, and they may remain second‑class citizens in the language.
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