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To: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf)
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Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 06:23:50 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RIP PHP 4?
From: penguin@php.net (Peter Brodersen)

On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 22:25:32 -0700, in php.internals
rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf) wrote:

>> b) We will discontinue supporting PHP 4 on 8/8/8 (because it sounds =
good
>> and gives people about a year).
>
>The number 8 also has lots of meaning in Chinese culture.  For example
>the Beijing Olympics will begin on 8/8/8 at 8:08:08 pm because the word
>for 8 sounds like ? which means prosper or wealth.

A bit more off-topic: A search for Beijing Olympics at Google gives
Reporters sans fronti=C3=A8res (Reporters Without Borders), www.rsf.org ,
as one of the first results. If they don't upgrade their PHP 4
installation it would create a great conspiracy theory :)

(of course, sites won't magically go black at that exact moment)


In general I really think every bit of help and information about the
issue would be paramount. Both information about the motive for
discontinuing support and practical information of how to test
existing scripts with PHP 5.

Usually the PHP development does not bother with specific vendors,
products, hosting companies or recommendations in general and so on.
But if we really are up for it, it might have a pacific effect to put
up some "known-good" lists; stuff like "Yes, phpbb does work with
PHP5. Yes, your ISP does support PHP5. Yes, we can recommend tools to
check for basic PHP5 compatibility. Yes, MySQL does work with PHP5".
The hard part about this is that if the lists are just somewhat
non-exhaustive people could be lead to think that all the stuff not
mentioned is not compatible.

php -l  might provide a basic indication of how much havoc an upgrade
will cause. Even though php is downloadable as a shell executable for
Windows as well I think that a bunch of the php developers still using
PHP4 are not into command line administration themselves. Maybe
creating a simple tool (perhaps graphic) to check for the 25 most
common bc breaks as well as lint checks and with detailed information
of what to do.

Basically when we tell users "You can't do that anymore" the obvious
question from the users would be "But what would I have to do
instead?".

I know the development of such a tool might be outside the scope of
usual php development. But if we want to change the behaviour pattern
of the users in the transitional phase it could be necessary.

--=20
- Peter Brodersen