ScyllaDB PHP Driver 1.4.0: the extension is pure C23 now

The ScyllaDB PHP driver is not a C++ extension anymore. As of 1.4.0 it's pure C23, the ZendCPP template layer we leaned on for the object embed and allocate pattern is deleted, and the build no longer needs a C++ compiler at all. Every hand-written .cpp file is a .c file now (71 of them), the descriptor generator emits .c , and CMake builds with c_std_23 and nothing else. That's the biggest change to how this extension is built since we forked it for PHP 8.0. This is also the release where a plan I opened back in 2023 finally landed. PR #50 laid it out: rewrite the src/Cluster directory to be more maintainable, use Zend Fast Argument Parsing, remove some memory allocations, and add .stub.php files that generate the C headers so nobody has to hand-maintain Zend arginfo by hand. 1.4.0 is that plan finished, and a lot more that grew out of it. The things you'll actually feel: persistent session connect() doesn't allocate a 200-character key string on every call anymore, and the minimum PHP is now 8.3 (8.2 is gone). Nothing in your application code changes, this is almost all under the surface. The .stub.php Build The idea from PR #50 was small. Instead of writing ZEND_BEGIN_ARG_INFO_EX blocks by hand and keeping them in sync with the actual method bodies, write the signature once in a .stub.php file and generate the C arginfo from it. In v1.4.0 that's the whole build. There are 75 .stub.php files now, and each one is just the PHP signature of the class: // src/Keyspace.stub.php interface Keyspace { public function name (): string ; public function replicationClassName (): string ; /** @return array<string, mixed> */ public function replicationOptions (): array ; public function hasDurableWrites (): bool ; /** @return Table|false */ public function table ( string $name ): Table | false ; public function aggregate ( string $name , mixed ... $types ): Aggregate | false ; } At build time CMake runs gen_stub.php (vendored from PHP 8.5's build/gen_stub.php , with two small p