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Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:13:36 +0100
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To: "PHP 'Internals' Wonderland" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: PHP6's future
From: kalle@php.net (Kalle Sommer Nielsen)

Greetings Internals

I've been thinking for a while what we should do about PHP6 and its
future, because right now it seems like there isn't much future in it.
PHP6 is already much different in terms of the current coverage, many
merges to HEAD seems like non unicode compliant versions. Meaning even
more work needs to be done to get it on a somewhat stable level than
it already is. I think we should if possible focus abit more on it,
and if it needs it then consider stopping the 5.2 branch so only 5.3 +
HEAD is under active development. I can see that Andrei is listed as
RM on the wiki, and I know that the unicode engine is his baby, but
I'm unsure whether he actually is else we should find one who is
willing to push PHP6 more now that its been very quite since
2005/2006.

What I propose is that we need to do an evaluation of the status, and
write up a milestone for an, lets say alpha 1 that only focuses on
Unicode, the API and coverage and fixing general merges that haven't
found place. Say our Alpha 1 TODO was like this:

* Clean up
 - Move extensions to PECL before unicode coverage
 - Move new extensions into the core before unicode coverage
 - Remove legacy code if any left like safe_mode, etc. and other
deprecated features
 - Merge missing fixes if any
* Unicode, Unicode, Unicode
 - Finish the API/Engine
 - Review all the current covered functions with help from the QA team
to make sure the tests passes as expected
 - Coverage at, say 60% or similar so its at 100% by stable release

What I'm trying to say here is that if we could focus on finishing the
unicode part and stuff like clean ups by the very beginning we don't
have to wait for an API to be converted to unicode so X, Z or Y
feature can be made possible, or bug FOO, BAR and BAZ fixed.

I know its a huge work as it is now, but if we don't start focusing on
PHP6 then we could just as re-branch 5.3 to trunk and merge eventual
improvements to it, which I honestly think would be such a waste.
After the first milestone is done, we can try focus / look at
implementing the very discussed features like:

* Type hinting
* Traits
* etc.

(PS. Please don't turn this thread into a some heavy debate about the
implementations of these, its just examples of what could be
implemented)

But what is every ones input on the matter of attempting to boost
PHP6's development? I'm willing to give my part in whatever I can to
help getting up on the feet to get this ball rolling.


-- 
regrads,

Kalle Sommer Nielsen
kalle@php.net