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Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:48:36 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] 5.4 moving forward
From: lester@lsces.co.uk (Lester Caine)

Pierre Joye wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 12:33 PM, Lester Caine<lester@lsces.co.uk>  wrote:
>> >  Stas Malyshev wrote:
>>> >>
>>>> >>>  changes. While that almost certainly is due to the poor way that the
>>>> >>>  some of the
>>>> >>>  moves were documented, a version of 5.2 is still a preferred base for
>>>> >>>  some? And
>>>> >>>  this should perhaps be viewed as the current LTS branch? Certainly for
>>>> >>>  windows
>>> >>
>>> >>  But
>>> >>  a) it is not, since we don't support it. Somebody else could do the
>>> >>  support, backport patches, etc. - but as far as PHP group is considered,
>>> >>  this version is not supported anymore and nobody has any desire to do it
>>> >>  as far as I know.
>>> >>  b) we certainly couldn't know anything about it in 2006 when we released
>>> >>  5.2.
>> >
>> >  Currently off the shelf, 5.2.17 is the 'old stable' but for some windows
>> >  users it IS the only available version. Changing the rest of the
>> >  infrastructure to support PHP5.3 builds of windows is not just a matter of
>> >  changing the PHP package!
> There is no reason not to update, absolutely none.

If you can convince the IT departments of some of the archaic council sites I am 
having to deal with that they do not have to stress test every part of a new 
system ... It's exactly the same argument FROM them as you are giving below as 
to why we should NOT provide support!
Fortunately the problem is being eased by the replacement of the legacy windows 
systems with Linux servers but that is still slow going in some customer sites. 
In my own case since there is no external access I don't have to worry about 
security issues anyway so perhaps the discussion is academic, but I can't 
believe that I am the only person seeing this problem.

>> >    So while PHP may have washed it's hands of the
>> >  problem, those users who are stuck in the hole still need to be supported in
>> >  some way. But all that is being asked for is security fixes which seem to be
>> >  a LOT less of a problem nowadays anyway? So support IS just a matter of
>> >  maintaining availability to it and the correct builds of extensions that go
>> >  with it.
> No it is not only about these rather simple tasks, really not. QA,
> testing, etc. require consequent efforts, from many different teams.

I think all I am asking for is that the various elements of PHP5.2.17 are more 
readily accessible directly from the PHP site, rather than having to scout 
around for things like the pecl extensions on third party sites. Perhaps I just 
need to push a current set of files onto my own site.

This does parallel the discussion on 'bundling' extensions, and simplifying 
things so that individual extensions can be managed and even updated without 
having to update the whole of the rest of the core.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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