AW: Providing Visual Studio 2005 builds (again)

PHPx will run with these Microsoft libraries and provide a 25% on
average performance increase in real world tests

Using Apache compiled with VS8 and PHP 5.2.4 compiled with VS8 bootest
the application speed of my scripts.

Ha. Yes. I see your point, but for those INSTALLING PHP, they would
prefer an MSI which just "did it". So, bundle the libs and move on.

I'm one of these Win32 user. Me and others hate *.msi files.
It puts info in the registry and you need to uninstall it over the
control panel.
zip pack is much easier to install / testing and removing.

So how would you expect to deal with a new MS runtime environment for PHP?

I suppose, no matter how many times the message "This version of PHP
requires this pack of files from Microsoft" with a link to the files
you are still going to get users complaining that their PHP doesn't
work.

Just like the number of bogus Doc bugs for the CHM being downloaded
via IE (See the warning on http://www.php.net/download-docs.php).

Users complain, it is part of the game. Nothing we can do or (not)
provide will change this fact.

Now, back to another fact, do we still require gcc 2.7.2.3 or libc
1.0.9? No, we don't.

Nobody said that we will stop providing vc6 builds, only that we have
been sitting on vc2005 or 2008 long enough, it is time now to make a
step forward and enjoy these new versions. I'm sure MS people will
also be very happy to give us a hand if we need it.

--Pierre

Richard, hi...

I suppose, no matter how many times the message "This version of PHP
requires this pack of files from Microsoft" with a link to the files
you are still going to get users complaining that their PHP doesn't
work.

This is exactly why we just had this whole discussion. Making sure the
new-to-us runtime is clearly marked 'beta' in some way, eg by making it
available only via QA and putting CRT info (and what to do about it) on that
page, will go a long long way to prevent those bogus bug reports flooding
in.

• Steph