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Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2024 15:32:13 +0100
To: "php internals" <internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [PHP-Dev] Versioned Packagers (Iteration IV)
Content-Type: text/plain
From: imsop.php@rwec.co.uk ("Rowan Tommins [IMSoP]")

On Thu, 11 Jul 2024, at 12:26, Mike Schinkel wrote:
> Let me use an analogy.  Envision two people on a city council of a small town.  One proposes the city should
> implement a water, power and sewer grid so anyone who wants to build a new home or business in the city 
> would be able to do so easily. 

This is a terrible analogy, IMHO. Here's a more pertinent one:

You have a city, where there is a working electricity grid. [That's autoloading, provided by PHP for many years.]

Most of the city are using a particular plug and socket system; the sockets aren't fitted by the electricity company, but the shops are full of devices that use these plugs, and most people have found the sockets really easy to fit. [That's Composer]

One district runs most of its appliances on gas, and has its own way of connecting them. People want to run electric appliances, and the grid goes right through the district, but for some reason, nobody's connected it up to the houses. So everyone has multiple gas-to-electricity converters, which is annoying. [That's WordPress]

Someone comes along, and rather than approaching the district [WordPress] and offering to help wire them to the existing grid, decides that what's needed is for the city to provide them with a new type of plug [a different autoloader function], which they won't be able to use immediately anyway.


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoperability
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect 

Adding something to core in the hope of it becoming a standard is exactly the opposite of the network effect. The network effect is "everyone already uses Composer, so nobody cares what PHP core does".

See also https://xkcd.com/927/ and since I used an electric plug analogy, check out the "international standard" plug, which has been adopted in exactly one country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60906-1


If you want to solve autoloading in WordPress, this is the wrong forum. 

Firstly, anything you do in core will not be adopted by WordPress, because it will be 5+ years before their minimum PHP version is high enough to use it. You're going to have to write a userland polyfill anyway.

Secondly, mapping namespaces to directories isn't the hard part for WordPress. The hard part is integrating into their existing plugin installer system - which already has a system for metadata, it doesn't need a new config file - and persuading plugin authors to actually use it.

Maybe you also need Composer to make some changes to control it without the CLI, so plugins can list their requirements and have them installed centrally. That's also not a subject for this list.

Regards,
-- 
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]