I don't mind the ifdef'ing as much as the other issues that exist:
- soap requiring 2.6.x. If its part of the core, it should only require the libxml version defined for the libxml config.
- There are some differences between 2.5 and 2.6. Under PHP 5 we were able to work around some of these by adding functionality. It's more noticeable under PHP 4 where the behavior has changed and without altering the API of domxml, certain things just wont work.
- Testing and tracking down bugs is a big PITA due to the differences between 2.5 and 2.6
To touch on Wez's comment about always requiring new versions. Prior to the 5.0 release a few people wanted to require 2.6 as the base version. I was dead against this due to 2.6 being quite new. At that point I opted for stability as 2.5.10 was very stable and carried by a lot of the distros. It's not that every new PHP version will be requiring a newer libxml, its just that differences betwwen 2.5 and 2.6 are very substantial (not to mention the new functionality that has been added). I think the xml developers can deal with 2.6.x as a base version without having to require further version upgrades. Yes, there may be recommened minimum versions for whatever reason (security, stability, etc..), but at least for the xml extensions in core, 2.6 offers everything needed to allow for rich xml technologies. Anything requiring newer versions can easily live in PECL and require whatever version they like. As time goes on and 2.6.x becomes outdated and the distros arent even bothing with that version anymore then it may possibly make sense to upgrade the minimum version, but I dont see anything in the immediate future that is going to require further version upgrades.
And for RHEL customers. They can always grab the rpms from xmlsoft. I would assume - but not guarantee :) - the rpms are built against that since Daniel is an employee of RedHat.
Rob
Christian Stocker wrote:
The configure check was always in place (even during php 4 times). It's just currently wrong in HEAD, as it's not decided, which version we support ;) (and ext/soap is another chapter)
We can of course ifdef it out, but there are in my opinion different reasons for not going further that road.
* No current known distro supports 2.5.11, they are either below that or already at 2.6
* It's not only the ifdef'ing, but also the testing, which is a pain. We have to compile and link all the time against 2.5 and 2.6 if we want to support both. Given our limited resources, stuff like the current it-s-not-compiling-on-2.5, will always happen. The latest patches are ifdef'ed, but obviously not everywhere.
* Support and Documentation. If some DOM or XML features in PHP are only available, if you have libxml 2.6, that does make documentation more complicated and confuse people. And some things still do not work properly in 2.5, like namespaces in SAX.
* New features, easier programming, improved (but BC) API.
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