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Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2014 22:17:51 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] my take on PHP 6, part 2
From: johannes@schlueters.de (Johannes =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Schl=FCter?=)

On Mon, 2014-02-17 at 15:02 -0600, Ralph Schindler wrote:
> I think the idea here is to be able to have per-project extension 
> dependencies, as you said, with composer.  This would be ideal in a way 
> for the ecosystem to vet extensions before inclusion in core.  But 
> currently, unless you own the system, extensions are extremely 
> inaccessible to gain any real momentum.

Right, but this isn't a trivial problem. We must ensure that
 - extensions load quickly (right now we can have relatively
   expensive MINIT code)
 - extensions survive loading at run time (some extensions, like
   session, eventually send HTTP headers, many won't handle
   "class/function already defined" errors well)
 - we don't run into issues in threaded environments (as long
   as we support those)
 - we can properly unload and clean up (some extensions mess with
   internal data structures, sometimes the OS has issue with releasing
   all symbols etc.)
 - we don't open too much of a pandorra's box in regards to security
   (if we restrict it to extension_dir it is useless for the composer
   case, if not we provide a tool to bypass all of PHP's blocking
   mechanisms)
 - ...

I think it is great to do, but a proper solution is not a small project
but might require a revamp of many APIs.

And I want to remind about my typical opinion: We should try to require
as little extensions as possible and do as many things as possible (in a
usable way) in userland. If we spend time on making PHP faster we reduce
the need for extensions even more.

johannes