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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Declare minimum PHP version required?
From: larry@garfieldtech.com (Larry Garfield)

On 2/3/14 1:57 PM, Yasuo Ohgaki wrote:
> Hi Stas,
>
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 4:42 AM, Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@sugarcrm.com>wrote:
>
>>> There are many code out there checks if (!extention_loaded(foo'))
>> die('You
>>> need foo'). This is waste of CPU resources once it is checked. These
>>> requirements for scripts may be evaluated at compile time and script
>> runs a
>>> little faster.
>>
>> Managing requirements is a job for package manager, like composer, not
>> language compiler, IMO.
>
>
> I agree that good package manager should manage requirements. However, once
> code is installed, package manager will not check requirements. (Package
> manager could be made to execute requirement checks at any time, though)
> Therefore, there would be developers embed environmental checks to make
> sure not to die with function not found, etc.
>
> In addition to this, there would be SCL for RHEL7 and there are some tools
> like phpenv. Installing PHP does not have to be executing PHP. Even if
> there is good package manager, compile time requirement check is nice to
> have. It's nice to have and it's not must have, though.
>
> Regards,

I have to agree with Stas and Sara on this one.  This is not the job of 
the language syntax.  This is the package manager's job; once the code 
is installed (not compiled, installed), you shouldn't be changing your 
version anyway without knowing what you're doing / verifying on a test 
system anyway.

If this were more like Javascript's "use strict", where it affected the 
parsing rules of that file, that would at least be useful (if 
potentially mind-bendingly painful for the engine; no I'm not suggesting 
we do that).  But a shortcut for if (version_compare()) die; is not 
needed, and that would be a dumb way to go about implementing version 
requirements in the first place.

--Larry Garfield