[development] Bridging PHP to Java or C++?

[Mark Fredrickson]

Hi all,

For my Machine Learning toolkit, I'm looking to draw on the work of either
the Java Weka ML system or the MLC++ library.

My question to the Drupal community is: which is easier to bridge (Java or
C++) to PHP (and specifically to Drupal)?

My vote is for Java, as I can distribute the (GPL'd) bytecode more easily
than pre-compiled C++ binaries.

Let's take performance off the table for this discussion. My design calls
for the ML algorithms to be pluggable via an API to the interaction code, so
high perf classifiers could be written later if my selected method proves
slow.

On a more general note, do any modules currently require php extensions that
are not in PEAR? If so, how do they handle getting the module compiled and
installed.

Thanks,

Mark Fredrickson