Roadrunner Laravel Package

Technical Evaluation

Architecture Fit

• High-Performance PHP Server: RoadRunner replaces traditional Nginx+FPM setups with a Go-based process manager, offering lower latency, higher concurrency, and reduced resource overhead. Ideal for microservices, APIs, and event-driven architectures where performance is critical.
• PSR-7/PSR-17 Compliance: Seamlessly integrates with Laravel’s HTTP layer (via nyholm/psr7 or spiral/psr7), enabling middleware-based routing, request/response handling, and dependency injection.
• Plugin-Driven Extensibility: Supports HTTP/2/3, gRPC, WebSockets, queues (RabbitMQ, Kafka, SQS), KV stores (Redis, Memcached), OpenTelemetry, and workflow engines (Temporal). Aligns with Laravel’s modular ecosystem (e.g., queues, caching, observability).
• Service-Oriented Design: Acts as a process manager (like Supervisor) with auto-restart, execution time limits, and systemd-like service control, reducing operational toil.

Integration Feasibility

• Laravel Compatibility:
  • HTTP Server: Replace php-fpm with RoadRunner’s HTTP plugin. Laravel’s Illuminate\Http\Request/Response can be mapped to PSR-7 via spiral/roadrunner-http or custom middleware.
  • Queues: Native support for Laravel Queues (e.g., queue:work can use RoadRunner’s Jobs plugin for RabbitMQ/Kafka).
  • Caching: Replace predis/php-redis with RoadRunner’s KV plugin for Redis/Memcached.
  • gRPC: Leverage Laravel’s grpc-php package with RoadRunner’s gRPC plugin for high-performance RPC.
• Middleware Stack: RoadRunner’s HTTP middleware (e.g., gzip, prometheus, otel) can augment Laravel’s middleware pipeline (e.g., add observability without modifying Laravel code).
• Dependency Injection: Works with Laravel’s container via PSR-11 adapters (e.g., spiral/framework or custom bindings).

Technical Risk

• Learning Curve:
  • Go-PHP Interop: Requires understanding RoadRunner’s RPC-based worker model (vs. Laravel’s synchronous request lifecycle).
  • Configuration: .rr.yaml replaces php-fpm.conf/nginx.conf; misconfigurations may cause silent failures (e.g., wrong server.command).
• Breaking Changes:
  • v2025 Upgrade: Laravel apps using RoadRunner v2024 may need plugin updates (e.g., KV plugin fixes in v2025.1.1).
  • gRPC/Protobuf: Requires PHP protobuf extension for optimal performance.
• Observability:
  • Metrics/Logging: RoadRunner’s prometheus middleware must be explicitly configured; Laravel’s monolog may need adaptation.
• Stateful Workflows:
  • Temporal Plugin: Adds distributed workflows but requires Laravel service integration (e.g., temporalio/sdk-php).

Key Questions

1. Performance Baseline:
   • How does RoadRunner’s latency/throughput compare to current nginx+php-fpm under Laravel’s workload (e.g., API routes, queue workers)?
   • Benchmark cold starts (e.g., Laravel’s service container initialization in RoadRunner vs. FPM).
2. Middleware Conflicts:
   • Will Laravel’s authentication middleware (e.g., auth:api) conflict with RoadRunner’s HTTP middleware order?
   • How to merge Laravel’s App\Http\Kernel middleware with RoadRunner’s (e.g., otel, gzip)?
3. Queue Worker Migration:
   • Can Laravel’s queue:work directly use RoadRunner’s Jobs plugin without rewriting workers?
   • How to handle queue middleware (e.g., dispatchAfterResponse) in RoadRunner’s async model?
4. Deployment Complexity:
   • How to containerize RoadRunner + Laravel (e.g., Docker multi-stage builds) while avoiding port conflicts (e.g., 8080 for HTTP, 6001 for RPC)?
   • Zero-downtime deploys: Can RoadRunner’s SIGUSR2 (graceful restart) replace Laravel Forge/Envoyer’s strategies?
5. Observability:
   • How to aggregate RoadRunner’s Prometheus metrics with Laravel’s laravel-debugbar or Sentry?
   • Does RoadRunner’s OpenTelemetry plugin support Laravel’s stack traces (e.g., Whoops/Symfony ErrorHandler)?
6. Plugin Stability:
   • Which RoadRunner plugins are production-ready for Laravel? (e.g., Centrifugo for WebSockets vs. Laravel Echo).
   • How to debug plugin failures (e.g., KV plugin crashes in v2025.1.0)?
7. Cost of Adoption:
   • Go Dependencies: Does RoadRunner’s Go runtime add binary size or startup latency compared to FPM?
   • Team Skills: Does the team have Go/PHP interop experience to troubleshoot RPC issues?

Integration Approach

Stack Fit

• Laravel Core:
  • HTTP Layer: Replace php-fpm with RoadRunner’s HTTP plugin. Use spiral/roadrunner-http for PSR-7 compatibility.
  • Queues: Migrate from database/redis queues to RoadRunner’s Jobs plugin (e.g., rabbitmq, kafka).
  • Caching: Replace predis with RoadRunner’s KV plugin for Redis/Memcached.
  • gRPC: Use Laravel’s grpc-php + RoadRunner’s gRPC plugin for high-performance RPC.
• Observability:
  • Metrics: RoadRunner’s prometheus middleware + Laravel’s laravel-prometheus.
  • Tracing: RoadRunner’s otel plugin + Laravel’s opentelemetry-php.
• Async Workflows:
  • Temporal: Use RoadRunner’s Temporal plugin for long-running workflows (e.g., order processing).

Migration Path

Compatibility

• Laravel Versions:
  • Tested with Laravel 10.x/11.x (PSR-7 compatibility).
  • Lumen support via spiral/roadrunner-lumen.

• PHP Extensions: