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Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:20:23 -0500
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To: Steph Fox <steph@zend.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Providing Visual Studio 2005 builds (again)
From: rrichards@ctindustries.net (Rob Richards)

Hi Steph

Steph Fox wrote:
> 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.

I guess the point I was trying to make was that I don't care where it 
goes. Either QA or snaps is the best place, but it just needs to be made 
available.
As for anyone's motives for wanting to do this; it really isn't a 
concern of mine because I agree with making a build available.

Rob

>
> - 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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