Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:104874
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: <CAJW__o1hA1DOp4Lf0LA2To5L-8c66+woFgoXAwfLaxxOiEwOPg@mail.gmail.com>
 <95e918c8-aaeb-d700-cc08-30f10a07162d@lsces.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <95e918c8-aaeb-d700-cc08-30f10a07162d@lsces.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2019 16:29:14 +0200
Message-ID: <CAJW__o2RWnOkm3BzEt6QAygggOBJLj3=3tnPeyzwuvg4MCj4AQ@mail.gmail.com>
To: Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>, 
	fbdev list <firebird-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Unbundle ext/interbase
From: kalle@php.net (Kalle Sommer Nielsen)

G'day Lester

Den fre. 22. mar. 2019 kl. 16.10 skrev Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk>:
> It is not that we don't want to stand up and maintain it, it has been
> impossible in recent years to get a handle on just what needs to be done
> TO maintain it. The PDO extension is in a much worse state than the main
> interbase one but both of them do their jobs as well as they can given
> that in the case of PDO it can't handle the cross database transactions,
> something that the main extension does quite happily.

Like the previous 2-3 times we have had this topic going about
removing the InterBase extension, you have referred to "we" (which I
suppose is the PHP community as a whole), however time over and time
again, no one has stepped up who has been able to maintain it. I
thought about the PDO_Firebird extension too for removal, but I wanted
to give the few possible PHP Firebird users a chance to evaluate the
situation

What do I mean by this? I mean that from a Core perspective (which I
have explained before to you personally a few years ago), but to
re-iterate: An extension in the Core that is not maintained, poses a
risk of security and maintenance required to keep the extension to a
level of quality that you (you as in the PHP community) deserve can
therefore not be up to par. On top of that, it is a burden on us Core
Developers that we cannot do anything to fix it.

> Personally I've been wasting time recently trying to keep alive sites
> that are using MySQL and the main problem with MySQL is the one thing
> that Firebird does nicely. Backup just runs as a secondary cron job
> independent of PHP while MySQL is reliant on PHP and current backups on
> some wordpress powered sites are failing because they run out of time or
> memory. I've never had a problem with loosing data with Firebird while
> I've had recover MySQL situations a few times in the last year!

That sounds like a bug in MySQL, which you should probably report to
them or look at your configuration.

> So all we are asking for is HELP with the code changes that result from
> changes to the PHP API to keep this available.

We asked for help in the past, many times in the fact if you search
the archives (and you have taken apart of the conversation every
single time), nothing has happened, therefore it is time to move past
this. The extension will put in a repository at PECL, however it is
unlike to retrieve further improvements or fixes from there unless
someone actually steps up to take over it.

We have done what we can to try call for help to keep this extension
for as long as possible, but we can only do so much for so long.

-- 
regards,

Kalle Sommer Nielsen
kalle@php.net