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Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 07:42:14 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
To: Jay Smith <jay@php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Fix for #27291 (get_browser() problems)
From: rasmus@php.net (Rasmus Lerdorf)

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Jay Smith wrote:

> Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
>
> > Hey Jay, sorry, didn't notice this message until after sending out my
> > previous request.  How do you feel about taking over maintaining the
> > browscap code and splitting it off into its own pecl extension so you are
> > not restricted by PHP's release schedule?
> >
> > -Rasmus
> >
>
> Splitting it off into PECL would probably be the best thing to do,
> especially with PHP 5 looming on the horizon. Gary is somewhat concerned
> that after 5 comes out, the problems that exist in the 4_3 branch will
> continue to plague him and 4.3.x browscap.ini users, so splitting it off
> from the PHP release sounds pretty logical.
>
> I'll volunteer to continue working on it, although hopefully most or all of
> the issues concerning the pattern matching should be fixed by my patch. The
> parser issues are another matter, but splitting it off into PECL will let
> us fix that up without having to worry about a complete 4.3.x release.
>
> So I'm +1 for this. The question is, do we split it off before the impending
> 4.3.5 release or afterwards? I would imagine that it should be done before.
> If 4.3.5 goes out the door, browscap will be compiled in statically, so
> that makes having it in PECL harder.

Given the fact that the current implementation in 4.3.4 doesn't actually
work, we might as well simply remove it for 4.3.5 and stick a note in the
documentation for people to do a "pear install browscap" for 4.3.5.  In
PHP5 we will have the ability to automatically bundle the latest stable
version of a PECL extension when we do a release which gives us the best
of both worlds.  Separate release cycles plus the ability for users to
update their browscap extension without upgrading PHP.

-Rasmus