It's sad to see what used to be a very stable, usable library descend into
chaos, confusion and anarchy ... people heading off in their own
directions, claiming the umbrella of phpLib but naming their rewrites after
themselves, all with seemingly no coordination or direction or vision
whatsoever. No wonder the need for PEAR was so immediately obvious to so
many people - not that PEAR was the best choice (in many ways worse than
phpLib), but I really do understand why the core PHP developers decided on
something other than phpLib.
The CVS is in such a mess that someone has to write a how-to and post it on
a personal web site! Then Giancarlo writes and releases several scripts
(Nathan - did I miss the announcement that he is now a new "committee of 1"
determining the philosophy and direction of the project?) and there goes
Donncha's roadmap again ...
Giancarlo, before you immediately flame me, I appreciate and admire your
work - and this is nowhere near "personal". I just don't think your
unilateral actions have a place in the overall scheme of things. We
desperately need someone, or a group of "someones", who will coordinate
this project.
I say this knowing full well that the immediate response is "Why don't you
do it, Bob?" and that my answer is the same as everyone else's - "I don't
have the time" ... which, I suppose, in many people's minds, removes my
right to complain. But that's why the subject is "Ruminations" and not
"Problems" ...
KK has moved on to other projects, but his hand on the tiller and his
vision are sorely missed, imho. We've been using phpLib in our work here
for almost 4 years now, and in spite of the lack of "official" progress and
register_globals and PHP4 and all the meanderings of this past 18 months or
so, we still rely on the library -- but on our own very highly modified
version of 7.2 -- on every site we do ... regardless of the installation,
regardless of the OS, and regardless of all the latest and greatest
MyCodeIsBetter streams that are cropping up.
A lot of people have spent long hours on this library, and for their code
(as well as the learning experience that they've provided me), I'm very
grateful. But my company can't afford to base our work on something that
is no longer predictably (please note that I said "predictably") reliable ...
Above all, after all, and with personal appreciation -- thanks, KK ...
Bob.
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