Your game as an executable

To give your game to someone who has nothing installed (no PHP, no Docker): JumPHP makes it one file to download and run, for Linux and for Windows. PHP, SDL, OpenGL and OpenAL are inside.

You need a JumPHP project on your computer (on your computer) and Docker. Your Claude can do it for you: ask it "make an executable of my game".

bin/jumphp export:standalone my-game              # Linux: games/my-game/dist/standalone/my-game-linux-x86_64
bin/jumphp export:standalone my-game --windows    # Windows: my-game-windows-x86_64.exe
bin/jumphp export:standalone my-game --linux --windows

How it is made

PHP is StaticPHP's (micro): PHP 8.5 as one executable, with JumPHP's extensions (SDL with its image, sound and font modules, OpenGL, OpenAL, gd, zip…), all built in.
Your game (its code, pictures, sounds, the engine) is appended to it, as a PHAR archive.

That PHP is the same for every game: it is built once (~15 minutes on Linux) or downloaded from JumPHP's releases, then kept in ~/.jumphp/standalone. After that, an executable takes a few seconds.

On the player's computer

The first launch unpacks the game into their cache (a second); later launches start at once. Saves and options go to their data folder:

	Linux	Windows
the game	`~/.cache/jumphp/`	`%LOCALAPPDATA%\JumPHP\`
the saves	`~/.local/share/<game id>/`	`%APPDATA%\<game id>\`

On Linux it runs on any distribution since 2013 (glibc 2.17) and uses the computer's display (X11 or XWayland), OpenGL and sound (PulseAudio, PipeWire, ALSA), as any Linux game does. On Windows (10 or newer), nothing to install.

Good to know

The file is not signed: Windows shows "Windows protected your PC"; click More info then Run anyway. On Linux, after a download: chmod +x my-game-linux-x86_64.
PHP for Windows can only be built on Windows: GitHub builds it (the standalone workflow of the JumPHP repository) and the command downloads it.
x86_64 processors only (no Mac or ARM yet).

The technical details: docs/standalone.md in your project.