To be fair, PHP does have a composer/compiler called composer.PHAR and it does incorporate PEAR somehow but it is difficult to manipulate/tweak it to inject task runner, build script (like Grunt/Gulp/Webpack be invoked in Javascript webdev env). It is difficult because lack of knowledge of core PHP and hard to do without touching core PHP/ PHP fundamentals incorporated in the PHAR file.
I have some practice with NodeJS (MEAN stack) and currently looking at Meteor. Both have the capability to perform desktop and mobile web development.
- For NodeJS, there are atom-shell and node-webkit allow packing of Chromimum lite so the webApp can run as a desktop application, high portability and with data encapsulation layers: mongoose (for MongoDB) and sequelize (for MySQL, Postgre, SQLite)
- Meteor has built-in function to package a desktop version of the webapp. Like Ionic-Cordova, Redux, both NodeJS and Meteor are able to have the apps deployable on mobile platforms. But learning some Java with Android studio would