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Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:58:21 +0200
Reply-To: Marcus Boerger <helly@php.net>
Message-ID: <9010225756.20080911115821@marcus-boerger.de>
To: Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] 5.3 Backwards Compatibility
From: helly@php.net (Marcus Boerger)

Hello Lester,

Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 7:43:25 PM, you wrote:

> Marcus Boerger wrote:
>> Hello Lester,
>>> Another major concern here since maintaining BC with *PHP4* is still an 
>>> unfortunate current requirement in the field is what happens when PEAR 
>>> actually uses namespace and other 5.3 only features. HOW will we manage 
>>> accessing versions of PEAR that are compatible with our active codebase and so
>>> ensure that we have compatible sets of packages?
>> 
>> PHP 4 is no longer supported - in no way. If PEAR still insists on PHP 4
>> then we cannot support PEAR either. Anyway, as far as I know PEAR does a
>> good job in maintenance, especially in supporting both PHP 4 and 5. And
>> some people are working on a new system that supports PHP 5.

> Marcus - I've never USED PHP4 in production, but it will be some time before
> it has been replaced on a lot of ISP's so at present OUR users require 
> maintaining support for PHP on the only versions they have available - at 
> present. NOW it at least practical to freeze a version that supports PHP4 and
> all the 'extras' that are compatible with that version and not allow any new
> features to be included in that build. SO we do not have to test changes to
> the code base for PHP5.3 against PHP4. There have always been problems with
> using 'new' features but making them available to older versions, which the
> compatibility libraries provide, but it is looking as if 'Built for PHP5.3'
> will mean 'will not work on PHP5.2' much more so than previous 'minor version
> changes'?

Seems like we're on the same track that PHP 4 stays as it is and code that
was designed for it can be happily maintained for it as well.

So we're at discussing changes inbetween the 5 series. Practically I do not
at all care for 5.0 or 5.1, they were experiements. However the move from
5.2 to 5.3 should be as easy as possible. If we have to many BC breaks
there then we need to list them all and discuss them one after the other.

marcus


> -- 
> Lester Caine - G8HFL
> -----------------------------
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Best regards,
 Marcus