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Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2013 22:35:57 -0800
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To: Kris Craig <kris.craig@gmail.com>
Cc: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>, "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Proposal for serious BC compatibility aka language versioning
From: karoly@negyesi.net (Karoly Negyesi)

OK, let's try this again.

Maybe language versioning is out. That's sad, but this thread brought
to light a much more important problem I would like to try to address.

I have long felt the PHP team is living in another world I do.

Let me describe my world. I am working on an open source package. So
does another 1000 or so developers. And another 10 000 adds modules
(or maybe you'd call them plugins). I do not even know how many then
adds custom, site specific code. This whole pile of software forms an
ecosystem which is quite sizeable. The software is somewhat popular.

Users form a pyramid. The bottom is shared hosts. Shared hosts that we
need to take into consideration. So if the shared world just barely
switched to 5.3 default then, alas, we can't release a version that
requires PHP 5.4 because there is no shared support for it. Also, it
worths mentioning that one of the more popular server OSes, Ubuntu LTS
also doesn't have a PHP 5.4 yet. Without software demanding 5.4, hosts
won't upgrade. This is a vicious circle that is superb hard to break.

I was told in this thread that the new release process solves this and
"it is our and our users role to explain that to their ISPs, admins,
etc".

Well, what am I to explain? As I mentioned previously, if a shared
host does a PHP upgrade and their users see new error messages, then
the host have a support problem. When I tried to point this out, I got
strawman arguments (about segfaults and bugfixes which breaking
forward compatibility and absolutely having nothing to do with BC) and
ridicule ("the problem is with your code"). You can ridicule the
codebase all you want, but the codebase a) works b) tested. This
doesn't change the fact that breaking backwards compatibility a little
is like being a little pregnant. Either you are or you are not and
currently you are not. This is sad because apparently a lot of work is
being put into this and then on a minor point it falls short of the
goal.

It would make everyone's life so much easier if all the Drupal 8 code
that is being written and tested with 5.4 would just work 5.5 without
*any* problem.

I would absolutely love not to have this conversation again three
years from now when we need to decide to ship Drupal 9 with PHP 5.5 or
5.4 -- because we could indeed do a campaign when 5.4 is due to change
to 5.5 outright because it won't break BC with 5.4. Is this absolutely
unattainable?

Best regards

Karoly Negyesi