@Jason.nix: Why don't you stop just asking questions and try it? You seem to be dreaming about this because you're not actually doing anything we are aware of.

How is it related to the original question?
The answer is: yes, it is possible.
Here is a howto: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...fferent-server

Important clarification: "compile" should be: "run."

The scenario that you describe is called "FastCGI," and it describes a way that a web-server, such as "nginix," can pass "CGI requests" to another server, expecting that server to execute the requested scripts and return "the result."

You can achieve this outcome in several ways ... both "between [virtual ...] machines" and "within a single containerized environment."

And: "the web abounds" with existing explanations.

You mean, how do you set nginx up as a reverse proxy to the other web server that's actually serving up the PHP application? The short answer is: over networking. Each service is running on a machine that has its own IP, and each service has a port.

And btw, Jason.nix: don't be a help vampire.

And, very importantly, "containerization" can mimic that.

Containerization can give each application the apparently-closed environment that it "expects" – filesystem, network, CPUs and so on – without it actually being real. Usually, this is sufficient.

I'll start another thread to ask about global SSH client configurations.