On 11 August 2010 15:13, Zeev Suraski <z...@zend.com> wrote:
> At 15:14 11/08/2010, Richard Quadling wrote:
>>
>> On 11 August 2010 12:10, Zeev Suraski <z...@zend.com> wrote:
>> > We need to remove strict typing from trunk before we release anything
>> > 'official' from php.net
>>
>> I thought "trunk" is, to some degree, the "work in progress" /
>> "developers only", YMMV branch. Pretty much anything/everything in
>> there is subject to change. No money back guarantees. Etc.
>
> Supposedly we switched to this strategy although I'm not sure why, nor I
> recall any discussion about it - although I may have missed it.  We never
> ever treated HEAD this way in the CVS days.  So sure, now it's called
> 'trunk', but why we should deviate from our decision making processes (as
> lax as they may be) because we changed version control systems is beyond me.
>
>> For an official release, even as a "Here is what we are working on. It
>> might not be perfect, but we like it" release, a separate branch would
>> be created.
>
> It's really not a matter of branches, trunk or HEAD.  It's a matter of what
> 'php.net' puts its virtual stamp of approval on.  If 5.4 alpha 1 came out
> with strict typing in it, it would send two very strong messages to the PHP
> community:
>
> 1.  The next version of PHP is going to be named 5.4 - something that wasn't
> agreed upon (although personally I don't mind that much).
> 2.  "We think strict typing is a good idea, here, play with it".  Well,
> turns out that the collective 'we' doesn't really think that at all.  It's
> no big news either, it's been known for many months.
>
> That goes back to my first paragraph.  Personally, I don't like the 'shoot
> first, ask questions later' approach that we supposedly switched to
> recently.  To me it makes a whole lot more sense to discuss first, and only
> once a decision is made - go ahead and implement it.  Whether we go formal
> with RFCs or less formal on internals@ (depending on the scope) - either way
> it's way better than committing first and only then discussing.  Once in
> trunk we suddenly need a great reason to remove it, since trunk is now the
> new 'status quo'.  Thankfully in the case of strict typing there was a
> strong, clear message from the community 'don't do it', but what about
> smaller features?
>
> 'Shoot first, ask questions later' equates 'bias for change'.  Is that where
> we want to be?  IMHO no, we should carefully consider every change we make
> to the core language at this point in time.
>
> Maybe I'm old school, but in my opinion, trunk should only contain
> agreed-upon features.  It should also always build and pass tests
> successfully.  It's not the wild-west version of PHP, it's PHP's next
> version, in progress.  Want to work on something experimental or
> controversial?  Do that in a branch, merge it if & when it gets accepted to
> the language.
>
> Zeev
>
>

Thank you for that Zeev.


-- 
Richard Quadling.

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