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Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2017 13:04:44 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] ext/xml: libexpat support still useful?
From: cmbecker69@gmx.de ("Christoph M. Becker")

On 09.01.2017 at 11:10, Joe Watkins wrote:

> Morning Christoph,
> 
> It is not clear what has been deprecated:
> 
>> 21 June 2016, Expat 2.2.2 released
> 
> Can you dig about some more and find out what's going on exactly please ?

Originally, ext/xml relied solely on libexpat[1], but in PHP 5 it was
rewritten to support also libxml[2] (apparently, all XML extensions had
been rewritten to support libxml back then[3]).  The reason to switch to
libxml apparently was to have a common backend for all XML extensions[4].

The deprecation notice was introduced in commit 73415c9e[5] which was
about removing the bundled libexpat.  I don't know whether there had
been any plans to remove libexpat support altogether sometime (and this
had simply be forgotten), or the deprecation notice had only been
introduced to express that libxml is preferred.

[1] <https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/PHP-4.4/ext/xml/config.m4>
[2] <https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/PHP-5.0/ext/xml/config.m4>
[3] <https://www.mail-archive.com/internals@lists.php.net/msg11050.html>
[4] <https://www.mail-archive.com/internals@lists.php.net/msg03676.html>
[5]
<https://github.com/php/php-src/commit/73415c9e#diff-eaaec22f50f9d41395bbe856ae4c5723>

Cheers,
Christoph

> Cheers
> Joe
> 
> [1] http://www.libexpat.org/
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 11:02 PM, Christoph M. Becker <cmbecker69@gmx.de>
> wrote:
> 
>> Hi!
>>
>> Due to <https://bugs.php.net/71595> I've noticed:
>>
>>   $ ./configure --help | grep expat | grep XML:
>>     --with-libexpat-dir=DIR XML: libexpat install prefix (deprecated)
>>
>> This deprecation note is apparently present as of PHP 5.0.0 at least.
>> So I wonder whether there's a good reason to still support libexpat,
>> especially as some behavior of the XML extension depends on the
>> underlying library.  It seems to me we could reduce the maintaince
>> burden by removing libexpat support altogether.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> --
>> Christoph M. Becker
>>
>> --
>> PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
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>>
>>
>