Anyone against requiring libxml2 2.6.x for PHP 5.1?

21 years ago by Christian Stocker — view source — reply

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There are new features in 5.1, which only run with 2.6 (the new error
handling system, for example, or proper namespace support for SAX).
Those are currently ifdef'd, but it definitively would make the life of
the XML maintainers a lot easier, if we could just throw away all < 2.6
code ;)

Furthermore, ext/soap already requires 2.6.3.

If noone disagrees, we'll bump up the version number in the configure
check and discard support for 2.5.

chregu

21 years ago by Adam Maccabee Trachtenberg — view source — reply

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There are new features in 5.1, which only run with 2.6 (the new error
handling system, for example, or proper namespace support for SAX).
Those are currently ifdef'd, but it definitively would make the life of
the XML maintainers a lot easier, if we could just throw away all < 2.6
code ;)

I don't see anything wrong with this, as libxml 2.6.0 came out in
October 2003. Of course, Debian stable still bundles 2.4.19, which is
from March 2002.

-adam

--
adam@trachtenberg.com | http://www.trachtenberg.com
author of o'reilly's "upgrading to php 5" and "php cookbook"
avoid the holiday rush, buy your copies today!

21 years ago by Christian Stocker — view source — reply

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There are new features in 5.1, which only run with 2.6 (the new error
handling system, for example, or proper namespace support for SAX).
Those are currently ifdef'd, but it definitively would make the life of
the XML maintainers a lot easier, if we could just throw away all < 2.6
code ;)

I don't see anything wrong with this, as libxml 2.6.0 came out in
October 2003. Of course, Debian stable still bundles 2.4.19, which is
from March 2002.

Which is still less than 2.5.11, which is required for 5.0. Therefore
Debian Stable people had to face this problem already with 5.0 ;)

Debian Testing has 2.6.11 and as we all know, Testing becomes stable
"really soon" ;)

chregu

-adam

21 years ago by Adam Maccabee Trachtenberg — view source — reply

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Which is still less than 2.5.11, which is required for 5.0. Therefore
Debian Stable people had to face this problem already with 5.0 ;)

Fair enough. Asking people to upgrade to 2.6.x vs 2.5.11 is minor.

-adam

--
adam@trachtenberg.com | http://www.trachtenberg.com
author of o'reilly's "upgrading to php 5" and "php cookbook"
avoid the holiday rush, buy your copies today!

21 years ago by Wez Furlong — view source — reply

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I was talking with George about this at lunch today. If we really
really do require the new version, then we should add a configure
check to enforce it, otherwise we should use appropriate #ifdefs.

Why?

Everytime we go to upgrade PHP, we find that we need to upgrade
libxml2 as well. While it's fine for PHP to use that, what about
other packages that also require libxml2? The paranoid sysadmin
inside us feels reluctant/worried at that prospect.

We (PHP) have had a similar issue with libcurl requirements in the
past too, to the point where I just stopped enabling it (things were
worse there though, as the download from sf.net was really
unpredictable and made it very difficult to get hold of the latest and
greatest).

So, my 2 cents are: if it's too much trouble to maintain those ifdefs,
bump the minimum requirements, otherwise, let's try to keep it
flexible.

--Wez.

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 02:01:13 +0100, Christian Schneider
cschneid@cschneid.com wrote:

Andi Gutmans wrote:

What's the status of 2.6.x in Linux distributions? Is it already
standard in the latest SUSE/Redhat distros?

SuSE 8.1: libxml2-2.4.23
SuSE 8.2: libxml2-2.5.3
SuSE 9.0: libxml2-2.5.10
SuSE 9.1: libxml2-2.6.7
SuSE 9.2: libxml2-2.6.12

I'd say that at least SuSE 8.2 and 9.0 are still quite common though.

Chris

21 years ago by Adam Maccabee Trachtenberg — view source — reply

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I was talking with George about this at lunch today. If we really
really do require the new version, then we should add a configure
check to enforce it, otherwise we should use appropriate #ifdefs.

Agreed. If we're requiring it, we need to modify the configure check.

So, my 2 cents are: if it's too much trouble to maintain those ifdefs,
bump the minimum requirements, otherwise, let's try to keep it
flexible.

libxml2 is on a release monthly schedule. There are always new
versions coming out. This is how they deal with fixes and patches.

Part of the reason (I believe) Christian wants 2.6.x is to deal with
certain features that aren't in the 2.5.x feature set, and that's
probably also why ext/soap needs 2.6.3.

-adam

--
adam@trachtenberg.com | http://www.trachtenberg.com
author of o'reilly's "upgrading to php 5" and "php cookbook"
avoid the holiday rush, buy your copies today!

21 years ago by Christian Stocker — view source — reply

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I was talking with George about this at lunch today. If we really
really do require the new version, then we should add a configure
check to enforce it, otherwise we should use appropriate #ifdefs.

The configure check was always in place (even during php 4 times). It's
just currently wrong in HEAD, as it's not decided, which version we
support ;) (and ext/soap is another chapter)

We can of course ifdef it out, but there are in my opinion different
reasons for not going further that road.

No current known distro supports 2.5.11, they are either below that or
already at 2.6
It's not only the ifdef'ing, but also the testing, which is a pain. We
have to compile and link all the time against 2.5 and 2.6 if we want to
support both. Given our limited resources, stuff like the current
it-s-not-compiling-on-2.5, will always happen. The latest patches are
ifdef'ed, but obviously not everywhere.
Support and Documentation. If some DOM or XML features in PHP are only
available, if you have libxml 2.6, that does make documentation more
complicated and confuse people. And some things still do not work
properly in 2.5, like namespaces in SAX.
New features, easier programming, improved (but BC) API.

chregu

Why?

Everytime we go to upgrade PHP, we find that we need to upgrade
libxml2 as well. While it's fine for PHP to use that, what about
other packages that also require libxml2? The paranoid sysadmin
inside us feels reluctant/worried at that prospect.

We (PHP) have had a similar issue with libcurl requirements in the
past too, to the point where I just stopped enabling it (things were
worse there though, as the download from sf.net was really
unpredictable and made it very difficult to get hold of the latest and
greatest).

So, my 2 cents are: if it's too much trouble to maintain those ifdefs,
bump the minimum requirements, otherwise, let's try to keep it
flexible.

--Wez.

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 02:01:13 +0100, Christian Schneider
cschneid@cschneid.com wrote:

Andi Gutmans wrote:

What's the status of 2.6.x in Linux distributions? Is it already
standard in the latest SUSE/Redhat distros?

SuSE 8.1: libxml2-2.4.23
SuSE 8.2: libxml2-2.5.3
SuSE 9.0: libxml2-2.5.10
SuSE 9.1: libxml2-2.6.7
SuSE 9.2: libxml2-2.6.12

I'd say that at least SuSE 8.2 and 9.0 are still quite common though.

Chris

--

21 years ago by Rob Richards — view source — reply

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Just to clarify soap. Soap will work under 2.6.0. I still have 2.6.3
stuck in my head, but it may just be due to the fact that the windows
build system is messed up for the early versions (can't really remember
why I think 2.6.3 as a minimum version though).

I don't mind the ifdef'ing as much as the other issues that exist:

soap requiring 2.6.x. If its part of the core, it should only require
the libxml version defined for the libxml config.
There are some differences between 2.5 and 2.6. Under PHP 5 we were
able to work around some of these by adding functionality. It's more
noticeable under PHP 4 where the behavior has changed and without
altering the API of domxml, certain things just wont work.
Testing and tracking down bugs is a big PITA due to the differences
between 2.5 and 2.6

To touch on Wez's comment about always requiring new versions. Prior to
the 5.0 release a few people wanted to require 2.6 as the base version.
I was dead against this due to 2.6 being quite new. At that point I
opted for stability as 2.5.10 was very stable and carried by a lot of
the distros. It's not that every new PHP version will be requiring a
newer libxml, its just that differences betwwen 2.5 and 2.6 are very
substantial (not to mention the new functionality that has been added).
I think the xml developers can deal with 2.6.x as a base version without
having to require further version upgrades. Yes, there may be recommened
minimum versions for whatever reason (security, stability, etc..), but
at least for the xml extensions in core, 2.6 offers everything needed to
allow for rich xml technologies. Anything requiring newer versions can
easily live in PECL and require whatever version they like. As time goes
on and 2.6.x becomes outdated and the distros arent even bothing with
that version anymore then it may possibly make sense to upgrade the
minimum version, but I dont see anything in the immediate future that is
going to require further version upgrades.

And for RHEL customers. They can always grab the rpms from xmlsoft. I
would assume - but not guarantee :) - the rpms are built against that
since Daniel is an employee of RedHat.

Rob

Christian Stocker wrote:

The configure check was always in place (even during php 4 times).
It's just currently wrong in HEAD, as it's not decided, which version
we support ;) (and ext/soap is another chapter)

We can of course ifdef it out, but there are in my opinion different
reasons for not going further that road.

No current known distro supports 2.5.11, they are either below that
or already at 2.6

It's not only the ifdef'ing, but also the testing, which is a pain.
We have to compile and link all the time against 2.5 and 2.6 if we
want to support both. Given our limited resources, stuff like the
current it-s-not-compiling-on-2.5, will always happen. The latest
patches are ifdef'ed, but obviously not everywhere.

Support and Documentation. If some DOM or XML features in PHP are
only available, if you have libxml 2.6, that does make documentation
more complicated and confuse people. And some things still do not work
properly in 2.5, like namespaces in SAX.

New features, easier programming, improved (but BC) API.

21 years ago by Dan Scott — view source — reply

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On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 09:00:24 -0500, Rob Richards
rrichards@ctindustries.net wrote:
<snip>

And for RHEL customers. They can always grab the rpms from xmlsoft. I
would assume - but not guarantee :) - the rpms are built against that
since Daniel is an employee of RedHat.

RHEL 4 (released today) ships libxml2 2.6.16, so not all RHEL
customers would need the xmlsoft RPMs :)

Dan

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