Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:63827
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 209.85.215.42 as permitted sender)
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <CAAyV7nF2tt6HtFZKevH_2kknqOvEmLJjEOF2_Bn_VHaZFUJERw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CADajX4CYZdNpgQv46m_6J7tQLBc=h6HxCn-bGpxr3Ou2VaqgBg@mail.gmail.com>
	<50A10A9D.9070402@oracle.com>
	<CAAyV7nF2tt6HtFZKevH_2kknqOvEmLJjEOF2_Bn_VHaZFUJERw@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2012 21:31:00 -0500
Message-ID: <CAL+t6cHrDGzd65O3z1MiO2qG5xS4eAiqFVMRKFGhcZmrV1RrCg@mail.gmail.com>
To: Anthony Ferrara <ircmaxell@gmail.com>
Cc: Ulf Wendel <ulf.wendel@oracle.com>, Adam Harvey <aharvey@php.net>, 
	PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC: ext/mysql deprecation
From: theanomaly.is@gmail.com (Sherif Ramadan)

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 9:50 AM, Anthony Ferrara <ircmaxell@gmail.com> wrote:
> My standpoint would be not to add E_DEPRECATED notices in 5.5... It's
> simply used too much to start loudly complaining about it. Instead, what I
> would suggest is the following:
>
> 1. Officially deprecate it now. Right now, on the docs it says
> "discouraged", but I would suggest changing that to officially deprecated.
> 2. The next release (5.6 or 6) would add deprecation errors to the code.
> 3. The next release (5.7 or 6 or 6.1, etc) would then remove the extension
> entirely.
>

I have to disagree with these suggestions. Whether you say it's
"official" or not in the documentation rarely seems to discourage
people from using it. As Adam pointed out, the deprecation error moved
people, with aforementioned functions, to take action, and most people
do not pay much attention to the documentation when it comes to
functions they've been using for years. At least that seems to be the
majority response. I believe the E_DEPRECATED warning is over due
here. This has been talked about for years.

The one constant I notice among the PHP community is that they are
incredibly resistant to take action. I can understand that some of
this resistance is justified and not without good reason, but most of
it is just procrastination. Lets not sit on this one until the next
release, because -- if I recall correctly -- that's the same thing
that was said during the last release. It's been over a year since the
Alpha release of PHP 5.4 and nearly 2 years since 5.2 has been EOL.
There's plenty of wiggle room in there for the majority of PHP users
to become content with ext/mysql being deprecated. Because there are
still people on 5.2 despite it being EOL, and plenty that have only
recently made the move to 5.3, which is soon to be EOL. The time it
will take those to move to 5.4 is likely the time it will take for
whatever comes after 5.5 to be stable. Those that are running legacy
code dependent on ext/mysql can choose to not upgrade as always.


> That way there's a significant roadmap towards deprecation, and people can
> migrate their code in tune. Sure, there are people who won't do anything
> and will break on that major release, but there's not much we can do about
> that anyway...
>
> Just my $0.02...

Giving people more time and more opportunity to continue using an
extension that is no longer maintained is hardly worthwhile.

There's already a good migration document available and plenty of
people are only finding it by chance when the realize ext/mysql was
soft-deprecated. More are likely to find it and begin a swift path to
migration once they start seeing E_DEPRECATED errors.

As for projects that still depend on ext/mysql, like some of the
popular CMS software out there, this will only compound the effect in
that their communities and user bases will urge those projects to step
up support to the new extensions in the future. Remember, It'll likely
be years before most of those user bases start finding PHP 5.5 as a
default with their hosts. This is plenty of time in my opinion.
Postponing this for a few more years makes no sense.

I'm all for throwing E_DEPRECATED in ext/mysql in 5.5 :)