Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:20336
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Message-ID: <4386C557.9080204@lerdorf.com>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 00:03:35 -0800
User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Macintosh/20051025)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk>
CC: internals@lists.php.net
References: <7.0.0.16.2.20051124161240.0573e640@zend.com>	<20051125034515.6fefa4e2@localhost.localdomain>	<43867C6C.2010209@prohost.org> <20051125040950.26305e08@localhost.localdomain> <43869FC5.4060708@lerdorf.com> <4386C1EF.7000601@lsces.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <4386C1EF.7000601@lsces.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: PHP 5.1 (Or How to break tousands of apps out	there)
From: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf)

Lester Caine wrote:
> Rather than work on a PHP4 fork, how about a means of converting PHP4 
> code so it will work on PHP5, and when something needs fixing in PHP5 
> check and warn rather than break? If you want more of us to test RC's 
> you need to restore confidence that it's worth the effort :(

This particular issue has nothing to do with PHP 4.  As far as everyone 
agreeing on a single release/code base.  I don't see that happening.  We 
are all on different timelines here with different requirements.  I 
skipped PHP 5.0.x completely, for example, and will move everything to 
PHP 5.1 because it fit my schedule best and the performance and features 
in 5.1 meet my requirements.  You decided on PHP 5.0.5.

And we are not a software company building software for our customers 
here.  We are all customers who happen to have similar requirements and 
collaborate, for better or worse, on a unified approach to meeting these 
requirements.  As these requirements diverge with the larger 
customer-base it becomes harder and harder to coordinate, but I don't 
see how we can massage the situation to get everyone on the same page 
without alienating pretty much everyone.  We have to find the balance 
between meeting the stability requirements for the customers who are 
perfectly happy with the featureset in PHP 4.x and don't want anything 
to change, the folks who want the simpler XML handling, SOAP and 
stronger OO in PHP 5 and then the group that need full Unicode support 
yesterday.

We have a proposed roadmap for PHP 6 in terms of features and changes. 
There are no dates on that roadmap because frankly that is impossible to 
do in a project like this.

-Rasmus