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Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2013 10:38:20 +0100
Message-ID: <CAEZPtU7SOsxQNcTEf3AupiA_LhkBTWA_qjnoYCUi8Fe3yk3QQw@mail.gmail.com>
To: Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net>
Cc: Kris Craig <kris.craig@gmail.com>, Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>, 
	"internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Proposal for serious BC compatibility aka language versioning
From: pierre.php@gmail.com (Pierre Joye)

hi Karoly,

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 7:35 AM, Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net> wrote:
> 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.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.


> 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.

And we changed what we used to be or used to do to ease this process.

> 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.

Explaining new notices or warnings being non fatal or not adding BC
issues are what apps/libraries developers should document, for
previous versions. Fixing them in newer updates (even minor) is easy
and will still work when executed on older PHP versions.

> 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.

That's why we do test almost all commits with all major apps or
frameworks. And that's why you should do it as well with your apps and
report any actual BC breaks.

> 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?

What seems to be unattainable to me is this kind of discussions, you
kept on your positions and refused to understand the actual need of
adding notices or warnings for non supported/edge cases where the code
behavior cannot be guaranteed. This is a circular discussion and I
don't see how it could end.


Cheers,
--
Pierre

@pierrejoye