Re: [Phpwiki-talk] Re: [phpwiki-checkins] CVS: phpwiki INSTALL,1.15,1.16

[Carsten K. <car...@ma...>]

Jeff,

Very well put, I understand now and agree with your point, that PhpWiki 
should generally strive to support a particular version of PHP and stick 
with it, until in the future it might be agreed that a higher version of 
PHP is needed.

I have some questions for you and the group about how to proceed from here.
..

The INSTALL docs I can change back to:

  PhpWiki requires a web server with PHP version 4.0.? or greater and a
  database application.

(Fill in the decided upon version number above) and change the version 
number in the next line from 4.0.5 to:

  (PhpWiki uses the array_search() function which is present only in PHP
  version php-4.0.4pl1 or greater.)

Up until now I hadn't been giving any consideration to which version of 
PHP a function was available in, except perhaps
that it is available in PHP 4.x.x. So far I only recall the one function I 
added in, array_search(), which apparently is only available in 4.0.4pl1 ? 
and Reini has given some handy substitute functions so this can easily be 
changed to work with older versions of PHP.

Whenever this situation arises in the future, should we put the workaround 
functions somewhere globally accessible like stdlib? or start a new 
library file only containing these functions? (and then call them if 
!function_exists('funcname') ?)

 From browsing around the PHP web site a bit, I think I figured out that 
php-4.0.4pl1 is a CVS version of PHP before the final release of 4.0.4. 
The online documentation doesn't always list in which CVS version of PHP a 
function was added, usually just the full release version number as is the 
case with the example array_search(). (The docs for call_user_func_array 
is one I found which *does* mention a pl version number http://www.php.net/
manual/en/html/function.call-user-func-array.html). At least I haven't 
found any such online reference yet for which functions were added in any 
pl version.

When SF was running the older version of PHP it probably would have been 
almost immediately evident when a new function was added which broke it. 
So now that SF is running PHP/4.0.6 do we just wait until somebody 
complains ;-) that a new function broke their PhpWiki running PHP-plxxx?

I'm sure there are a lot of stable CVS variations of PHP different people 
could be using, how to decide which version is PhpWiki going to support? 
If it will help us, I am willing to to some "monkey" work, examine each 
function currently used in PhpWiki then visit each function page in the 
PHP docs to determine the necessary PHP version. Someone else with 
experience using non-release "pl" builds would have to fill in the blanks 
where the pl version is not available.

Carsten

On Sunday, February 24, 2002, at 12:34  pm, Jeff Dairiki wrote:

> My point is, that we need to decide what versions of PHP we are going
> to support (I thought we already had).  Then, if PhpWiki uses functions
> which aren't available in a "supported" version of PHP (without providing
> appropriate fallbacks or replacements), it is, by definition, a bug
> in PhpWiki.
>
> Of course, it's allowable to change the list of supported PHP versions,
> (e.g. PhpWiki 1.2 runs under PHP 3, PhpWiki 1.3 doesn't) but that
> shouldn't be done without a fair amount of deliberation.
>
>
>
> Carsten Klapp said:
>>
>> Hi Jeff,
>>
>> I based this on the most recent function I could think of that is used
>> by  PhpWiki, I think it's array_search() but I haven't created a list
>> of all  the functions used. The PHP online docs say this one needs PHP
>> 4.0.5 or  greater. What's the pl designation in your version, is that a
>> beta?
>>
>> Do you know if there is a table somewhere which lists what version of
>> php  all the various functions were introduced? (so that one doesn't
>> have to  look at all the individual function pages).
>>
>> Carsten
>>
>> On Saturday, February 23, 2002, at 09:03  pm, Jeff Dairiki wrote:
>>
>>> Carsten Klapp said:
>>>> Update of /cvsroot/phpwiki/phpwiki
>>>> In directory usw-pr-cvs1:/tmp/cvs-serv22514
>>>>
>>>> Modified Files:
>>>> 	INSTALL
>>>> Log Message:
>>>> Required PHP version 4.0.5, updated instructions for new RawHTML
>>>> plugin
>>>
>>> Why are we requiring 4.0.5?  I use 4.0.4pl1.  I'm sure lots of others
>>> do too.  (It's what RedHat, and others distributions distribute.)
>>> (Keep in mind, too, that many people don't have complete control over
>>> their web-servers.  Up until recently the SourceForge project servers
>>> were running 4.0.4pl1, I think...)
>