·  v1.8.2  ·  MIT

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A standalone, memory-safe PHP application server, written in Rust.

Askr embeds the PHP interpreter in-process — no FastCGI, no FPM — and serves it from a memory-safe Rust hot path. In worker mode it boots your application once and serves many requests against it, removing per-request framework bootstrap entirely.

One binary replaces the usual stack: TLS and HTTP/2, static files, a response cache, worker supervision, queue workers, a scheduler, and an admin dashboard. No proxy in front, no Redis beside it.

Performance

Real Laravel + Livewire, served entirely in-process:

	Per-request (the FPM model)	Worker mode (boot once)
Latency per request	~110 ms	~9 ms
Throughput (8 workers)	37 req/s	347 req/s

Roughly 9×, verified correct under load: 300/300 200, each worker booted exactly once, no state bleed. Raw embedding overhead is ~0.02 ms per request (~56k req/s single-core for a trivial script) — the framework bootstrap is the cost, and worker mode removes it.

Reproducible method and comparisons against FrankenPHP, FPM+nginx and RoadRunner: docs/BENCHMARKS.md.

Install

Self-contained releases for Linux (x86_64 and arm64) carry the binary, the embedded PHP, OPcache and the examples in one tarball:

VER=v1.8.2; ARCH=$(uname -m)
BASE=https://github.com/kwhorne/askr/releases/download/$VER
TARBALL=askr-${VER#v}-linux-$ARCH.tar.gz

curl -fsSLO $BASE/$TARBALL
curl -fsSLO $BASE/$TARBALL.minisig
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kwhorne/askr/$VER/keys/release.pub -o askr.pub
minisign -V -p askr.pub -m $TARBALL          # verify before unpacking

tar xzf $TARBALL && cd askr-${VER#v}-linux-$ARCH

./askr-run.sh doctor
ASKR_APP_BASE=/var/www/app ./askr-run.sh serve \
  --root /var/www/app/public \
  --worker-script examples/laravel-worker.php \
  --workers "$(nproc)" --tls-self-signed --admin 127.0.0.1:9000

Releases are signed with minisign and carry a SLSA build-provenance attestation; askr upgrade verifies the signature itself and refuses a release it cannot verify. See SECURITY.md.

Runtime libraries are usually already present: sudo apt-get install -y libssl3 libxml2 libonig5 libsqlite3-0.

Docker, tarball and source installs are covered step by step in docs/INSTALL.md; production setup with systemd, TLS and hardening in docs/UBUNTU.md.

Capabilities

Runtime	Embedded PHP 8.5 (non-ZTS, OPcache + JIT), Laravel's full extension set, one worker process per core on a shared listener, worker mode with per-request state reset
HTTP	TLS (rustls) with HTTP/2 and optional HTTP/3, auto-TLS via ACME, virtual hosts, redirects, compression, streamed static files and uploads
Caching	Response cache with tag invalidation, ESI fragment assembly, PURGE/BAN, declarative per-path rules, request coalescing, stale-if-error, survives restarts
Without Redis	Shared-memory cache, sessions, atomic locks, counters, job queue and broadcasting — with Laravel drivers in packages/laravel
Operations	Zero-downtime rolling reload with canary judging, supervised queue workers and scheduler, fleet-wide rate limiting, leak-aware recycling, admin dashboard and Prometheus metrics
Security	Signed and verified self-update, seccomp + Landlock sandbox, unsafe confined to the PHP FFI boundary

Every capability is documented at elyracode.com/docs/askr.

Documentation

Full documentation: elyracode.com/docs/askr

The same pages live in docs/. The ones most people need first:

• Laravel setup — the recommended guide: composer require kwhorne/askr-laravel, .env, queue, scheduler, broadcasting
• Ubuntu setup — the recommended production install
• Maintenance — deploys, caches, certificates, backups, log rotation
• Configuration and CLI reference
• Upgrading — what to adopt per version, and what can bite you
• Stability & compatibility — the 1.0 contract and deprecation policy

Project layout

crates/
  askr/            the standalone server binary
  askr-php/        embeds PHP (embed SAPI) via FFI
packages/laravel/  the askr-laravel composer package
scripts/           libphp build, packaging, release tooling
examples/          worker-mode templates and an example askr.toml
docs/              full documentation
keys/release.pub   the release signing key

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. CONTRIBUTING.md covers building (an embed libphp first) and the checks CI runs. Please follow the Code of Conduct, and report security issues privately per the Security Policy rather than in public issues.

Links

• Documentation: elyracode.com/docs/askr
• Product: elyracode.com/askr
• Source & issues: github.com/kwhorne/askr
• Container images: ghcr.io/kwhorne/askr
• Laravel package: kwhorne/askr-laravel

License

MIT © Wirelabs AS — see LICENSE.