On Sunday 17 June 2007, Eugene wrote:
> I am copying Ilia Alshanetsky from PHP community.
Hi Illia!
> Hi people,
>
> From: "Larry Garfield" <larry@...>
>
> > I'm not sure what compatibility issues you mean.
>
> Like, at last do something about thread-safety and remove recommendation
> 'only Apache 1.3' that no one takes seriously (by the way that version is
> still supported, though not recommended).
The statement on multi-threading is that if one thread has a crash, you lose
all of your threads when the process dies. If it's separate processes, then
one PHP process crashing doesn't take down your whole app for everyone. At
least that's the reasoning Rasmus told me at php|tek a few weeks ago when I
asked him the same question. However, that's really neither here nor there
at this point.
> > There will never be a version of PHP 5 that handles things exactly the
> > same as
> > PHP 4. Ever. That is simply not possible to do. The major version
> > number
> > changed (4 to 5) to indicate that some things did change. That's why it
> > wasn't called PHP 4.6. :-)
>
> People expect changing things to get better, not to be changed in some
> painful ways just to support a bunch of acronyms mostly irrelevant to them.
> Also we could look at the history of Intel and Microsoft to get a few
> lessons on the value (and long-term power) of compatibility and
> evolutionary changes.
This is now off topic, really, so I'm not going to bore the rest of the list
with it aside from saying that those acronyms are very relevant to a whole
lot of things and a whole lot of people.
> > PHP 4.4 (4.3.x is retired with bugs) does have a nice feature set, yes.
> > But
> > PHP 5 has all of the same tools plus many more: XML handling that takes
> > less
> > than 500 lines of code; Better socket/stream support; Improved timezone
> > handling; A unified database API that does all of your injection escaping
> > for
> > you; and lots more. (Note that none of that has anything to do with the
> > changes to OO support, which get the most press.)
>
> By the way I hoped that you would at least get rid of those ugly '$this->'
> things while at complete OOP revamp =((
> Half of PHP success (at least in early learning) is its similarity to C/C++
> in many important ways. These elements are tested and polished by 30+ years
> of evolution... and help to get results quickly and intuitively without
> looking into manual for every little detail. Why not emulate C++ (or at
> least Java) instead of rolling-your-own-OOP?
I'm not sure who you're addressing here. I'm not a PHP core developer, so I
didn't have anything to do with what changes did and didn't get done in PHP
5. That also has nothing to do with the topic at hand, though.
> > As is, it's as if desktop developers couldn't take advantage of the
> > security
> > features of Windows Vista because they need to maintain compatibility
> > with all of those servers running Windows ME. :-)
>
> 'servers running Windows ME'? he-he =)
> But seriously, 98/ME was on 'extended support' (mostly security fixes)
> until LAST YEAR, when almost everyone forgot that it existed. Win2K will
> be supported till 2010. WinXP is on standard support (security, other
> bugfixes, feature updates) till 2009 and will have 5 years of extended
> support after that. In other words, MS is not forcing users to switch to
> Vista en masse (even though it has any short-term commercial reason to do
> so).
>
> I have come across a discussion from December 2006
> (http://ilia.ws/archives/147-Why-are-you-not-using-PHP-5.html) and I even
> saw your (Larry) posts there. But despite clear hints from the user
> community, you still go about it all wrong =(
> Instead of creating an easy and painless way to 'Change the Web to PHP5 one
> site at a time', you are trying to force, trick or at least talk the users
> into 'switching'. Not gonna work.
On the contrary, the only web hosts that we've heard anything from have been
very supportive of this effort. Admittedly we've only heard from two, but
they were both positive.
> What is needed, IMO:
> 1) Ability to switch a particular site (ideally, even particular directory)
> to PHP5 and back again at will. Well there is a way
> (http://www.directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16399) and I
> will give it a try after the vacation -- was planning to play with FastCGI
> anyway. But for most people, more simple and painless way is required, like
> config switch... I'm sure it is doable -- most C/C++ and Fortran compilers
> somehow manage to support different languages off the same executable =)
Again, I think you're directing this at the wrong person. I'm not a C
developer; I don't know the ins and outs of running PHP 4 and PHP 5 via
mod_php and cgi together on a per-directory basis. That's not a real
solution at this point, however.
> 2) A clear, detailed and complete list of all the incompatibilities between
> PHP4 and PHP5 and things that could go wrong. Not the hype but the
> discussion of real problems and solutions.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration5.php
http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration51.php
http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration52.php
> 3) Developers/admins/users/customers can't be forced to review every line
> of code to find and fix the potential problems - or find themselves in a
> minefield. register_globals was bad enough. Some detection utility is
> needed -- either standalone or in a form of compiler warnings like 'Feature
> XXX may be incompatible with PHP5'. Remember the Y2K migration tools?
error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
See what breaks. :-) E_STRICT exists for that purpose.
> 4) Something should be done about Zend-compiled (obfuscated) code. For the
> most part, it is commercial code that people actually paid for because it
> is important in their business processes. They can't just throw it away and
> can't find (let alone fix) the problem even if they had resources for that.
At the risk of sounding undiplomatic, I will simply say "that's why open
source is safer than proprietary software." :-)
There's nothing stopping companies from running their own dedicated server on
PHP 4, or PHP 3, or Linux 2.2 for that matter. But right now the mass-market
of hosting is holding everyone else back so that you can only use PHP 5 if
you run your own private server. That situation needs to be reversed. We're
trying to do what we can from our side.
> Hope this helps to make PHP better
Which is the end goal. :-)
--
Larry Garfield AIM: LOLG42
larry@... ICQ: 6817012
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea,
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession
of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." -- Thomas
Jefferson
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