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Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:10:27 +0100
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Subject: 5.3 Release Planning
From: johannes@php.net (Johannes =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Schl=FCter?=)

Hi all,

recently there were quite a few proposals about stuff for 5.3. If we implement 
them all we won't finish in a "soonish" time and we get new ideas postponing 
the 5.3  release therefore the following:

- Scanner based on re2c:
  Going to re2c promises to make maintenance simpler and increase the parsers 
  performance. Currently the prototype does not provide support for Zend 
  multibyte mode. This seems doable within April. Hence I ask for finishing
  by end of April the latest. Once that is done we will go over to a freeze and
  switch to bug fixing only mode. 
  If this is done sooner than we'll freeze sooner, too. If there are delays 
  we'll freeze anyways and use the scanner for a later release.

- bundling pecl/intl
  According to Stas it's ready for being bundled and was voted in. The only
  question I see there is the "how to bundle it". There we should definitely
  find a better thing than symlinking around on the CVS server, an option
  might be to to switch to subversion and use svn:externals or keeping stuff
  in pecl and then having some scripts (maybe part of buildconf/the release 
  scripts) fetching them into a checkout. Just ideas ... For the moment 
  symlinking might be the best.

- bundling pecl/phar
  Lots of work has been done there, I'd like to have it in, general PECL
  discussion: See above.

- Large File Support
  That's a thing on the todo for ages. A patch was proposed by Wez once[1]. The
  patch should be, according to Wez, improved to use php_config.h for the
  defines instead of passing them using CFLAGS. Additionally one should mind
  Joe's comments[2] in that old thread. If somebody has time I'd welcome it, if
  not: It waited for so long already so it might wait a bit more. ;-)

  [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/internals@lists.php.net/msg31117
  [2] http://www.mail-archive.com/internals@lists.php.net/msg31124

- All the other stuff
  Extension maintainers always like improving their extensions, There will be 
  improvements to GD I think and other stuff, I don't list that all - the
  timeline is mentioned above.

- Fixes&Testing
  Test snaps, report bugs, fix bugs, ... That's the most important thing. That's
  where really everybody reading this can contribute and do important things. :-)


You might miss some stuff in the list above, at first one might think about
these:

- Traits: Interesting concept, basically most of us want it, some decision
  about some details needed, then some implementation, i had a short discussion
  with Stefan and we agreed that we don't call it "release critical" for 5.3 and
  plan 5.3 without traits.

- Closures/Anonymous functions: Basically the same as with traits, some detail
  discussions left, then a bit time for updating the patches, not planned for 5.3.

Surrounding all this stuff we'd also have another topic we should start
working on:

Updating guide, something like README.UPDATE_5_2. I think our new wiki
might be a good place to create such a list. I'll find some place there
and come than back to the list, but you might already start thinking
about stuff you know that should be mentioned there. That's again a
thing everybody can contribute.

That's enough for the moment,
johannes
PHP 5.3 RM