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Reply-To: "Steph Fox" <steph@zend.com>
To: "Rob Richards" <rrichards@ctindustries.net>
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Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:53:09 -0000
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Providing Visual Studio 2005 builds (again)
From: steph@zend.com ("Steph Fox")

Rob,

Elizabeth is being paid by Microsoft to get a PHP distro with the 2005 CRT 
onto the official downloads page. I don't think it's beneficial to PHP or 
its users to take that approach. We have a QA site, and I think if there are 
to be test distributions then that's the place for them. I've also offered 
up a good way of making sure we have ongoing Windows support into future CRT 
generations, but nobody seems very interested in it.

- Steph

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rob Richards" <rrichards@ctindustries.net>
To: "Elizabeth Smith" <emsmith@elizabethmariesmith.com>
Cc: <internals@lists.php.net>
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 9:51 AM
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Providing Visual Studio 2005 builds (again)


> Not to drag this on any longer, but here's my 2 cents on this...
>
> VC 6 builds are not going away any time soon. They work, are well 
> supported and have gone through years of testing.
>
> However, eventually the builds are going to have to be upgraded to newer 
> compilers.
> With the changing run times, these are going to need a good amount of 
> testing, so it would be in our best interest to start putting out some 
> builds with VS 2005 (or 2008 - pick *ONE*) so that everything (including 
> working with 3rd party libs) can start being tested, and possibly fixed, 
> now rather than later.
>
> For all we know, we'll get lucky and all libs have been optimally coded so 
> even though they might have been compiled with VC6, VS 2003, etc... and 
> relying on a different run time they all will work under a VS 2005/8 
> build. On the other hand, if there are problems, who here that is building 
> on 2005/8 tests EVERY function in EVERY extension? We need a broader 
> audience to test this, so it makes sense to provide a build (including 
> pecl extensions for that matter). We don't need the builds updated so 
> frequently right now, but we do need the builds.
>
> I really don't see what the problem is here. No one here is asking to 
> replace the official builds right now. We have someone offering to do the 
> bulk of the work. All she's asking for is some room to put the builds so 
> that some testing can get started.
>
> Rob
>
> Elizabeth Smith wrote:
>> Steph wrote:
>>> Hi Andi,
>>>
>>> Can I just butt in here for a moment?
>>>
>>> Why is everyone in such a rush to get away from the lowest common
>>> denominator? Please don't close your eyes to the chief advantage of
>>> the lcd build, which is that it works as-is on every Windows version
>>> we claim to
>>> support. Even on Windows 98 according to user feedback (although I'd
>>> love a guided tour of the specific optimizations that break platform
>>> compatibility, to get a better idea of where things might fall apart).
>>> If we start building the official PHP distro with VS 2005 we're going
>>> to have to ship the wretched CRT along with it, or else drop support
>>> for everything pre-XP. Is that actually a desired outcome for PHP 5.3?
>>> It seems a tad more
>>> appropriate, to me at least, to leave that alone until our users stop
>>> reporting XP bugs.
>>>
>>
>> I wasn't suggesting replacing the current VC6 builds, I was suggesting 
>> making 2005 builds available for those who want to test.  Since linking 
>> to a third party distribution site is out of the question (which boggles 
>> my mind because you DO that for other OS's... Windows is somehow held to 
>> a higher standard I guess), why can't we provide an official download, or 
>> heck even a build at snaps.php.net, (in addition to the VC6 versions) for 
>> the adventurous to use?  I would like to find edge cases now instead of 
>> when 2005 IS the default build - and it will happen eventually.  And it's 
>> quite frankly foolish to ask the windows users who want to test to build 
>> their own binaries as well, you'll never get a windows test bed with that 
>> attitude.  While on unix and linux the "compile it yourself" is standard 
>> thought, that is not the case and windows and never will be, and all the 
>> talks I do on how to build on windows can't erase an entrenched 
>> mentality. (besides the fact that it's just a heck of a lot harder to set 
>> up a build system on windows)
>>
>>> The build system we use is known to work, out of the box, across all
>>> the current MS compiler versions (read: VC6 -> VS 2005 - I'm
>>> old-fashioned enough to see 2008 as 'next year'). The only issue,
>>> then, is third party
>>> libraries. Ergo, all we really need is a 'zip.zip' for each CRT,
>>> surely? This assuming - and I guess we do have to assume it - that MS
>>> are pushing us into the unhappy position of having to distribute our
>>> own builds of third
>>> party libs if we want to support Windows at all. (Of course dropping
>>> that support would be another option, if possibly not a popular one.)
>>
>> Actually works fine on 2008 as well ;)  The problem is most third party 
>> libs we link against have windows support as an afterthought - no one on 
>> the project works on windows or tests on windows and the attitude is so 
>> negative in the open source (particularly gnu) world that the people who 
>> DID originally maintain the ports ran away, so the build support for MSVC 
>> is outdated or missing completely, only people who are brave enough to 
>> assemble make files or projects by hand and fiddle until it builds have 
>> success.  (Heck, even libxml2 which has great official windows build 
>> support links against very antiquated libiconv - 1.9 released in 2004 
>> when the latest is 1.12) I'd argue that this has nothing to do with 
>> Microsoft and everything to do with Open Source negative stereotypes.
>>
>>> The distribution of third-party libraries is intended for people
>>> rolling their own PHP builds. I don't see any justification for
>>> distributing more than one CRT version of every PHP release, in fact I
>>> think doing so is
>>> likely to confuse hell out of most of PHP's end users. The only way it
>>> makes any sense is on the 'testing' front - so maybe it'd make sense
>>> to ask for volunteer builder/testers on more specialized page(s) used
>>> for 'zip.zip'
>>> distributions, and set up a bunch of edge case scripts (e.g. stuff
>>> that passes around data structures or uses a lot of IO calls, etc).
>>> The framework to do that already exists in run-tests.php, although the
>>> tests themselves
>>> may not. Setting up something this way - a collection of third party
>>> libs built with VC7, VC8, VC9 when it arrives - and testing the
>>> various library builds with a same-compiler version of PHP in known
>>> critical areas, now that
>>> would be genuinely useful. That would mean that when (most likely)
>>> Apache move on, we're good and ready to move on with them.
>>
>> This is a good goal, and something I've been working on in general, at 
>> least assembling open source libraries that PHP extensions link against, 
>> and building them on different runtimes.  But there's no place for a 
>> "testing area" just for windows that could also distribute libs currently 
>> on the website.  Anyone have ideas for a home for this?  Maybe a windows 
>> section of gcov?  Or maybe test 2005 builds on snaps.php.net or a page 
>> just for binaries for windows?  The bottom line is the performance 
>> increase is enough to justify distributing newer builds.
>>
>>> It concerns me that Edin hasn't been involved either in this
>>> discussion or the one a few weeks back, so I'm glad you've been in
>>> touch over this issue off-list. I know Elizabeth knows what she's
>>> talking about when it comes to
>>> VC8 (and probably beyond), and hope she and Edin can come to some sane
>>> arrangement. But please hold back with distributing VC8-only versions
>>> of PHP when we still support platforms pre-dating its C runtime, and
>>> please back off from the idea of offering a range of official PHP
>>> builds with different CRTs. It makes absolutely no sense to do either
>>> thing at this point in time, and it won't make a great deal of sense
>>> to do the latter at any time.
>>
>> Since when is two versions a range...ah semantics...
>>
>>> nb Andi, Edin's been distributing official NTS builds for some time
>>> now... they make a huge difference to CLI, and a visible difference to
>>> PHP-GTK's draw speed. And please note, even the 'NTS' option has
>>> proved confusing for
>>> some...!
>>>
>>> - Steph
>>
>> I have one last suggestion that maybe Microsoft (and everyone so against 
>> the 2005 builds) might want to think about.  PHP does not distribute 
>> binaries for linux and similar distributions, however they do provide 
>> links to external distribution sites.  What's to stop Microsoft from 
>> distributing non-thread-safe 2005 builds (obviously optimized for IIS) on 
>> their own servers - and why couldn't the downloads page link to that? 
>> After all PHP provides the same service for other operating systems. In 
>> fact, several of the links on the downloads page aren't even official 
>> builds, but third parties providing the software.  Is there some kind of 
>> issue with third party providers not being able to have the same service, 
>> just because they're for Windows?  If it's simply because PHP provides 
>> windows binaries already...if the binaries are inferior to third party 
>> offerings...
>>
>> Anyway, the offer stands to help get libraries up to speed...  I'll see 
>> if I can get a hold of Edin, I have space and bandwidth if that's his 
>> biggest issue.  I could argue with you all night Steph, but it's obvious 
>> you have an issue with the C runtime changing that Microsoft has done 
>> with its compilers, and so no matter what I say you won't change your 
>> opinion ;)  Anyone else (other than Steph or Stas) care to weigh in?
>>
>
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