Guys,
It's really not about who is RM. The main reason why PHP 5.1 has been
delayed so much is because every time we were about to release,
another critical problem creeped up. We had PDO problems, class
constants, reference issues, date issues, security issues, and others
(more or less in that order). So releasing a PHP 5.1 was just not
possible, and even now, we definitely have to go through an
additional release candidate. I have no problem with Ilia picking up
and running the release (especially with all the Jewish holidays
coming up), but be aware that this wasn't the main issue from my
point of view. And if you look chronologically at the events, you'll
see that there really wasn't a point in time to release something
stable. As much as I personally wanted PHP 5.1 to be out the door
already, it doesn't make much sense to release it when the CVS is not
stable. So I'm glad Ilia has offered to give this one a push, but we
still need to release another RC and be sure we're doing well.
Regarding BC breakage. I'm not saying we shouldn't break BC in some
cases, but in many cases, there's no big advantage (except for some
people's warm and fuzzy feelings), and it can cause a lot of heart
aches and disruption in PHP use. Migration is very important.
Microsoft is loosing quite a bit of their users because they created
a serious disruption in going from ASP to ASP.NET. Making that move
hard, makes people reconsider their use of technology which at this
point includes JSP, .NET, Ruby on Rails and Python. I think we have
to be responsible to try and prevent that and make the move easy.
Mixing the hosting providers into it, which a huge amount of the PHP
community is using, including software like Gallery, Mambo, various
forums, etc. it will be even more devastating to PHP use if we create
too many disruptions.
Now some disruptions have to happen but it has to be a balanced
decision and not just an idealists decision; especially when
supporting BC is not such a huge maintenance headache which in many
cases is true, and just recently Dmitry showed it can be quite
possible without impacting the PHP 5 features.
We are also creating far too many disruptions between versions
without giving info to our users. I already mentioned in a smaller
forum that we need an UPGRADING file where we explain what
disruptions we have and how to upgrade (I want this to be in PHP 5.1
and we've already started working on some but holidays... I'd
appreciate help). We should make sure that as we post releases we
provide info and only way to do this is to do it as part of the dev
cycle and not have the RM try and remember what upgrading notes we
need). Also, responding to things like the reference break is
important (thanks to Dmitry that issue is very much improved), and
hopefully with 4.4.1 and 5.0.6 with some release announcement coupled
with the UPGRADING file (side-by-side with NEWS) we'd fix this problem.
Regarding Unicode. We discussed this many times and agreed to support
both for PHP 6. Performance quite a major issue with Unicode, and so
is keeping BC to allow for an easy upgrade. I wouldn't take
performance lightly. I do think that there's a chance that when PHP 6
rolls out, and if the Unicode prooves itself and the masses migrate
to that, that it might make sense to re-evaluate and see if it makes
sense to cut the old support out. But at this point in time, it's far
too premature to come to this conclusion. Most people here haven't
even run it and checked it. Again, this should be done with a
balanced view and not just making idealist decisions.
I hope people take some of these things to heart, because I think we
have a responsibility to the large community out there to take a
balanced view. PHP 5 and PHP 5.1 are huge steps forward and are
providing an impressive array of features, so I wouldn't say we're
not making progress despite the fact that we've tried to keep BC when
feasible (and with the important stuff we haven't). Remember, when
you're part of a project, things always look grimmer because you see
the insides. It's true for companies and true for open-source.
Sorry for the long email. It's just that I have to jump on a plane
tomorrow and will barely be available for the next 2-3 days.
Andi
At 02:43 AM 10/4/2005, Edin Kadribasic wrote:
Derick Rethans wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Oct 2005, Christian Schneider wrote:
>
>
>>Jani Taskinen wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, but OO in PHP 4 is illusion.
>>
>>Ok, I see, I replied to a troll. Silly of me. Won't happen again after this
>>one, I promise.
>
>
> Atleast he contributes something useful to the PHP project too.
I'd wish that some of the PHP contributors would post more helpful
comments about the project than calling it a 'nazi project', everything
they don't like (such as PDO) 'crap'. Also trying to shoot down
everything that is not in the cool branch of the day (5.1 these days).
No wonder that nothing productive can come out of such 'contributions'
on this list.
Now, why don't we focus on what's important and get 5.1 released.
Zeev, Andi if you don't have time for doing Release Mastering (and it
seems that you don't) should we assign someone else for the task. Ilia
said that would do it, and he did a great job with RM in the past.
Edin
Zend/PHP Conference & Expo
Power Your Business with PHP
October 18-21, 2005 - San Francisco
http://zend.kbconferences.com/
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