My two cents... Why can't "common users" install a PECL extension? It's not a difficult, obscure or undocumented process.
I can accept the reasoning > Apply a PECL strategy to try experimental features might not be the convenient way always, for example, if we create a new ... sensitive ini setting that affects the behavior of PHP somehow... OR ... what about a new sensitive funtion in a "core extension" like JSON? But why would the answer in those cases not be "compile the PHP fork/branch with the experimental feature", rather than find a way to flag the engine to switch arbitrary new features on or off, complete with all the complications in the primary source code that would cause? We are, after all, talking about features which by definition should not be relied upon for any production use. Or we're talking about features which are stable and valuable enough to have passed an RFC process, but then what's gained from an experimental designation? Why couldn't they just be included in a preview/beta/RC version which anyone could decide to run or not?
