PHing Is Not GNU make. It is a make tool written in PHP and based on the ideas and concept of Apache Ant. It can basically do anything you could do with a build system like GNU make, for example, but uses XML for storing the targets and commands. Using XML, Phing avoids problems like the "Space before tab problem" in GNU make. Its features include processing files while copying (e.g., do Token Replacement, XSLT transformation, etc.) and various file system operations.