Not to drag this on any longer, but here's my 2 cents on this...
VC 6 builds are not going away any time soon. They work, are well
supported and have gone through years of testing.
However, eventually the builds are going to have to be upgraded to newer
compilers.
With the changing run times, these are going to need a good amount of
testing, so it would be in our best interest to start putting out some
builds with VS 2005 (or 2008 - pick *ONE*) so that everything (including
working with 3rd party libs) can start being tested, and possibly fixed,
now rather than later.
For all we know, we'll get lucky and all libs have been optimally coded
so even though they might have been compiled with VC6, VS 2003, etc...
and relying on a different run time they all will work under a VS 2005/8
build. On the other hand, if there are problems, who here that is
building on 2005/8 tests EVERY function in EVERY extension? We need a
broader audience to test this, so it makes sense to provide a build
(including pecl extensions for that matter). We don't need the builds
updated so frequently right now, but we do need the builds.
I really don't see what the problem is here. No one here is asking to
replace the official builds right now. We have someone offering to do
the bulk of the work. All she's asking for is some room to put the
builds so that some testing can get started.
Rob
Elizabeth Smith wrote:
Steph wrote:
Hi Andi,
Can I just butt in here for a moment?
Why is everyone in such a rush to get away from the lowest common
denominator? Please don't close your eyes to the chief advantage of
the lcd build, which is that it works as-is on every Windows version
we claim to
support. Even on Windows 98 according to user feedback (although I'd
love a guided tour of the specific optimizations that break platform
compatibility, to get a better idea of where things might fall apart).
If we start building the official PHP distro with VS 2005 we're going
to have to ship the wretched CRT along with it, or else drop support
for everything pre-XP. Is that actually a desired outcome for PHP 5.3?
It seems a tad more
appropriate, to me at least, to leave that alone until our users stop
reporting XP bugs.
I wasn't suggesting replacing the current VC6 builds, I was suggesting
making 2005 builds available for those who want to test. Since
linking to a third party distribution site is out of the question
(which boggles my mind because you DO that for other OS's... Windows
is somehow held to a higher standard I guess), why can't we provide an
official download, or heck even a build at snaps.php.net, (in addition
to the VC6 versions) for the adventurous to use? I would like to find
edge cases now instead of when 2005 IS the default build - and it will
happen eventually. And it's quite frankly foolish to ask the windows
users who want to test to build their own binaries as well, you'll
never get a windows test bed with that attitude. While on unix and
linux the "compile it yourself" is standard thought, that is not the
case and windows and never will be, and all the talks I do on how to
build on windows can't erase an entrenched mentality. (besides the
fact that it's just a heck of a lot harder to set up a build system on
windows)
The build system we use is known to work, out of the box, across all
the current MS compiler versions (read: VC6 -> VS 2005 - I'm
old-fashioned enough to see 2008 as 'next year'). The only issue,
then, is third party
libraries. Ergo, all we really need is a 'zip.zip' for each CRT,
surely? This assuming - and I guess we do have to assume it - that MS
are pushing us into the unhappy position of having to distribute our
own builds of third
party libs if we want to support Windows at all. (Of course dropping
that support would be another option, if possibly not a popular one.)
Actually works fine on 2008 as well ;) The problem is most third
party libs we link against have windows support as an afterthought -
no one on the project works on windows or tests on windows and the
attitude is so negative in the open source (particularly gnu) world
that the people who DID originally maintain the ports ran away, so the
build support for MSVC is outdated or missing completely, only people
who are brave enough to assemble make files or projects by hand and
fiddle until it builds have success. (Heck, even libxml2 which has
great official windows build support links against very antiquated
libiconv - 1.9 released in 2004 when the latest is 1.12) I'd argue
that this has nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to do with
Open Source negative stereotypes.
The distribution of third-party libraries is intended for people
rolling their own PHP builds. I don't see any justification for
distributing more than one CRT version of every PHP release, in fact I
think doing so is
likely to confuse hell out of most of PHP's end users. The only way it
makes any sense is on the 'testing' front - so maybe it'd make sense
to ask for volunteer builder/testers on more specialized page(s) used
for 'zip.zip'
distributions, and set up a bunch of edge case scripts (e.g. stuff
that passes around data structures or uses a lot of IO calls, etc).
The framework to do that already exists in run-tests.php, although the
tests themselves
may not. Setting up something this way - a collection of third party
libs built with VC7, VC8, VC9 when it arrives - and testing the
various library builds with a same-compiler version of PHP in known
critical areas, now that
would be genuinely useful. That would mean that when (most likely)
Apache move on, we're good and ready to move on with them.
This is a good goal, and something I've been working on in general, at
least assembling open source libraries that PHP extensions link
against, and building them on different runtimes. But there's no
place for a "testing area" just for windows that could also distribute
libs currently on the website. Anyone have ideas for a home for
this? Maybe a windows section of gcov? Or maybe test 2005 builds on
snaps.php.net or a page just for binaries for windows? The bottom
line is the performance increase is enough to justify distributing
newer builds.
It concerns me that Edin hasn't been involved either in this
discussion or the one a few weeks back, so I'm glad you've been in
touch over this issue off-list. I know Elizabeth knows what she's
talking about when it comes to
VC8 (and probably beyond), and hope she and Edin can come to some sane
arrangement. But please hold back with distributing VC8-only versions
of PHP when we still support platforms pre-dating its C runtime, and
please back off from the idea of offering a range of official PHP
builds with different CRTs. It makes absolutely no sense to do either
thing at this point in time, and it won't make a great deal of sense
to do the latter at any time.
Since when is two versions a range...ah semantics...
nb Andi, Edin's been distributing official NTS builds for some time
now... they make a huge difference to CLI, and a visible difference to
PHP-GTK's draw speed. And please note, even the 'NTS' option has
proved confusing for
some...!
- Steph
I have one last suggestion that maybe Microsoft (and everyone so
against the 2005 builds) might want to think about. PHP does not
distribute binaries for linux and similar distributions, however they
do provide links to external distribution sites. What's to stop
Microsoft from distributing non-thread-safe 2005 builds (obviously
optimized for IIS) on their own servers - and why couldn't the
downloads page link to that? After all PHP provides the same service
for other operating systems. In fact, several of the links on the
downloads page aren't even official builds, but third parties
providing the software. Is there some kind of issue with third party
providers not being able to have the same service, just because
they're for Windows? If it's simply because PHP provides windows
binaries already...if the binaries are inferior to third party
offerings...
Anyway, the offer stands to help get libraries up to speed... I'll
see if I can get a hold of Edin, I have space and bandwidth if that's
his biggest issue. I could argue with you all night Steph, but it's
obvious you have an issue with the C runtime changing that Microsoft
has done with its compilers, and so no matter what I say you won't
change your opinion ;) Anyone else (other than Steph or Stas) care to
weigh in?
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