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Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2013 00:12:29 -0500
Reply-To: Sanford Whiteman <swhitemanlistens-software@cypressintegrated.com>
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To: Matt Wilson <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Questioning the future of PHP
From: swhitemanlistens-software@cypressintegrated.com (Sanford Whiteman)

> This is something of a wet dream of mine 

TMI, my friend. TMI.

Anyway... I think your Subject is unnecessarily trolly even if the
substance of your post isn't. So maybe you could re-post with a "WAS:
Questioning..." to avoid p'ing off the dev team?

If I'm understanding your statement of "The autoload problem"
correctly, the language-default spl_autoload function indeed allows
you to install a package safely -- in an environment that you know has
not completely overridden the default autoloader.

If you want to make sure the default is called for your directory
structure, then you can make sure to tell the people using your
package to put the default spl_autoload in their autoloader chain.

Can you explain how this departs from your vision?

I don't think what you want is another "default" autoloader, but a way
of ensuring the system default is called once your package is
physically installed on a system. Unfortunately, there would always be
file I/O overhead if it were to be called even if the PHP install has
nothing in the default file layout. You could argue that the default
spl_autoload should run unless deliberately turned off (never mind BC
for the moment), but then it would just become a popular best practice
to turn it off and you're back at the same place.

-- Sandy