Apart from the minutes of a meeting back in November 2005 ( was it really
that long ago ) there seems to be no further definitive documentation on the
PHP6 roadmap. This is partially why the continual development of PATCHES for
PHP5 relating to UNICODE is somewhat annoying.
I KEEP asking what is holding up making a beta release of PHP6, and I see
nothing in the 2005 meeting that is anything more than a restructure and
recompile using unicode as the base. MOST of the other things are just
removing things that are now normally switched off anyway. And I mean a BETA
since the thing has been in alpha for 2 years!
I will ask this question again as I cant find ANYTHING on the php.net site to
answer it. IS PHP6 going to be unicode ONLY internally are is half of the
problem here that THAT decision still has not been agreed?
I came to PHP a some time before PHP5 was out of candidate stage, and decided
that there was no point deploying PHP4 since PHP5 was going to be out soon,
and that PHP4 would be phased out. I have not regretted that decision and have
managed to navigate the BC hand grenades lobbed since. FINALLY PHP4 is being
deprecated but still there is no sign of PHP6 over the horizon. So I am not
surprised that PHP5 is now receiving the same treatment as PHP4 has had for
years and having facilities that should be core to PHP6 patched back in.
So apart from the 'PHP6 being under heavy development' statements all over the
place where is the CURRENT status of PHP6 available to look at? There is
little in the bug list that seems overly problematic, but until there is an
indication that a release of PHP6 may be on the horizon there is no point
carrying out any heavy testing with application. Since major parts could
change before it is released? Some time ago - and I forget how long ago - I
was running a copy of PHP6 but lack of any real progress has meant that I've
probably NOT run it for over a year. If I set up a machine again is it worth
the effort - when may there be something deployable?
--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
Contact - http://home.lsces.co.uk/lsces/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://home.lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk//
Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php
Lester Caine wrote:
I KEEP asking what is holding up making a beta release of PHP6, and I
see nothing in the 2005 meeting that is anything more than a restructure
and recompile using unicode as the base. MOST of the other things are
just removing things that are now normally switched off anyway. And I
mean a BETA since the thing has been in alpha for 2 years!I will ask this question again as I cant find ANYTHING on the php.net
site to answer it. IS PHP6 going to be unicode ONLY internally are is
half of the problem here that THAT decision still has not been agreed?
The current state is indeed not very well documented, but your best bet is to
look in the discussion archives for the thread called "why we must get rid of
unicode.semantics switch ASAP". I think there was an agreement that PHP 6 should
not have that switch, but whether PHP 6 will have binary strings on by default
or unicode ones is another thing. I think most of people were leaning to having
BC maintained as much as possible and thus having binary strings on (which is
not my view, but that's another matter).
We also discussed building a set of testing and migration tools (also in that
thread, I believe), which would enable us to make sure that there are as few BC
issues as possible. However, no one has stepped up to do that yet. If you'd like
to help in any way, please let us know.
-Andrei
Andrei Zmievski wrote:
Lester Caine wrote:
I KEEP asking what is holding up making a beta release of PHP6, and I
see nothing in the 2005 meeting that is anything more than a
restructure and recompile using unicode as the base. MOST of the other
things are just removing things that are now normally switched off
anyway. And I mean a BETA since the thing has been in alpha for 2 years!I will ask this question again as I cant find ANYTHING on the php.net
site to answer it. IS PHP6 going to be unicode ONLY internally are
is half of the problem here that THAT decision still has not been agreed?The current state is indeed not very well documented, but your best bet
is to look in the discussion archives for the thread called "why we must
get rid of unicode.semantics switch ASAP". I think there was an
agreement that PHP 6 should not have that switch, but whether PHP 6
will have binary strings on by default or unicode ones is another thing.
I think most of people were leaning to having BC maintained as much as
possible and thus having binary strings on (which is not my view, but
that's another matter).
Then I am probably with you on that. Given the maze that binary strings
create, I was hoping that we would kill it dead and simply work with a single
character set ;) Translating a set of files TO unicode is not a complicated
matter, I have to backup and restore the databases to switch to unicode anyway.
We also discussed building a set of testing and migration tools (also in
that thread, I believe), which would enable us to make sure that there
are as few BC issues as possible. However, no one has stepped up to do
that yet. If you'd like to help in any way, please let us know.
If I can create a PHP6 installation that uses nothing but unicode then it will
be worth the exercise. If there is still an on going war requiring that all of
the code page crap is still supported then I'll wait for PHP7 :( And soldier
on with PHP5 for now.
--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
Contact - http://home.lsces.co.uk/lsces/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://home.lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk//
Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php