Is there a way to compile PHP into something unreadable?

Question

PHP

Hello.
The task is to encrypt the source so that it does not affect performance. We are not talking about 100% protection, but I would like to discourage the desire to delve into the source code. I fought with ionCube for a long time. It would seem that everything is simple, I chose the php version, checked the boxes, encrypted it with a whole archive. But when dumping to the server, there are errors with dependencies in the files, and the original works without a single varning. At first I wanted to ask the question “How to compile php into bytecode?”, But I was not sure that this is exactly what I need ... Please tell me how to solve my problem.
Thanks for answers!
quote (stackoverflow):

As for what others have written here about not using obfuscation because it can be broken etc:
I have only one thing to answer them - don't lock your house door because anyone can pick your lock.

Answer 1

you are doing something wrong with the ioncube: the market is full of fairly complex systems with a bunch of dependencies quietly working under it.
and my personal experience (although it was a long time ago) shows that it is so.
Personally, I think protecting PHP sources is a very bad idea.

Answer 2

ioncube is probably the only unhackable
and so - obfuscation

Answer 3

Look at the obfuscator from kaimi. There you will understand what is the point.

Answer 4

does it all lie on your server or do you give the code away? I saw some guys have an ingenious solution, the paths from which the secret code was taken were added to include_path, and for end users only the php index and some custom garbage in their folder were available. I'm not too sure about the reliability of this. now I tested it, everything seems to be so. is enabled, the content cannot be retrieved. It seems that the main thing is that these paths are outside of open_basedir.