Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:36046
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain chiaraquartet.net from 38.99.98.18 cause and error)
Message-ID: <47D15C23.4020907@chiaraquartet.net>
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:15:47 -0600
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (X11/20080227)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Antony Dovgal <tony@daylessday.org>
CC: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Johannes_Schl=FCter?= <johannes@php.net>, 
 PHP Internals List <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <1204823427.30934.9.camel@goldfinger.johannes.nop> <47D0ABE7.3010700@chiaraquartet.net> <47D10AB8.9090306@daylessday.org>
In-Reply-To: <47D10AB8.9090306@daylessday.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: 5.3 Release Planning
From: greg@chiaraquartet.net (Gregory Beaver)

Antony Dovgal wrote:
> On 07.03.2008 05:43, Gregory Beaver wrote:
>> Just a quick note: I'd like to consider another possible approach,
>> having pecl/phar synced from stable pecl release.  
> 
> I'm not sure it's good idea.
> IMO it should go trough much more thorough testing to be included into the core.

Hi,

I wholeheartedly agree that phar needs more testing.  I also think some
other areas of php could have used more testing, such as the serious
issues I found in zlib stream filters, but they were useful for years
even with edge case flaws.  Areas that I know phar needs work:

 * big-endian like PPC tar/zip support is incomplete, I need to write
the simple byte order reversal that will complete this, and add the same
compiler flags to the tar struct that we use on zip structs.  This is an
easy fix.
 * finishing up include_path support for streams.  Other threads address
this issue.  This will remove the need for most of the proposed magic in
 pecl/phar/TODO.
 * ensuring full code coverage of tests, we're currently at about 68-70%
 * finishing up Steph's work on data-only tar/zip support
(non-executable tar/zip read/write)
 * 2 open bugs at pecl.php.net
 * more hammering should be done on the web front controller to ensure
edge cases have been considered

Areas of phar that are rock-solid:
 * phar stream read/write
 * file format support for the 3 file formats read/write
 * anything else not yet mentioned.

I expect to be able to wrap up the issues listed very quickly.  Tony has
been fantastic at finding memleaks/segfaults as new features are added,
and we welcome the minutest scrutiny.

> And I'm still not convinced we should include any PECL extensions in the core,
> I believe it should go the other way round.

This is secondary, but I'm proposing using phar to test the mechanism
that will allow ext/ to migrate to pecl/ and still work as it did in ext/

Greg