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Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2015 22:08:37 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] What's our official stance on small self-contained
 additions in a micro version
From: dennis@birkholz.biz (Dennis Birkholz)

Hi,

Am 01.04.2015 um 21:43 schrieb Stanislav Malyshev:
>> That is right and I think that is the reality we have to face: most
>> users use distro versions. They get a new version when they need to
>> upgrade their distro every few years.
> 
> I'm not sure where you got this statistics from, but as I said, it is
> very easy to make .rpm or .deb with source version from php.net of the
> same minor. I've seen it done many times. It's next to impossible to
> make the same with different major, and nobody would do it for obvious
> stability concerns. I think the approach of "you have to wait several
> years for any tiny change" is terrible and detrimental for PHP
> development, however easy it makes the life of folks in Debian, etc.

I vaguely remembered the usage statistics that Anthony assembled in
December and had other numbers in my head. (see
http://blog.ircmaxell.com/2014/12/php-install-statistics.html)

5.5.12 (Ubuntu 14.10): 0.16%
5.5.9 (Ubuntu 14.04): 1.81%
5.4.16 (CentOS 7.0): 0.42%
5.4.4 (Debian Wheezy): 2.14%
5.3.10 (Ubuntu 12.04): 4.13%
5.3.3 (Debian Squeeze, Centos 6.6): 10.37%
5.3.2 (Ubuntu 10.04): 1.06%
5.1.6 (CentOS 5.11): 1.14%
==============================
Debian, Ubuntu and CentOS: ~21,23%

(I assume here like Anthony that the installs matching a distribution
specific version always come from that distribution).

So I have to step a little back from my previous statement, only about
1/5th of the installs seem to use distribution installs. But there are a
lot of used versions in between. Why they don't upgrade I don't know,
but if the upgrade would be a no-brainer without any risk for
incompatibility, probably more would upgrade, but that is just speculation.

>> No, I don't say ban non-security bugfixes. But I say don't add new
>> methods/functionality that should go in the next feature release.
> 
> I'm fine with adding only those that should go into the current one,
> namely small self-contained additions :) Just as we agreed on long ago.

An addition and a bug fix are different things.

Greets
Dennis