On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Rasmus Lerdorf <ras...@lerdorf.com> wrote: > > > My main concern is the trickle-down effect a major low-level engine > addition causes. Your patch is just the tip of the iceberg which will cause > dozens of people weeks of work to account for the new code all across the > PHP ecosystem. The most complicated being the opcode cache support which > really only can be written by a handful of people due to the complexity > involved. Combine that with the fact that other projects who currently use > annotations, perhaps not to the level of Doctrine, but still, state that > they would have a hard time switching to this new approach it becomes really > hard to commit all these people and all this time to this. > > We are severely resource-constrained when it comes to people who can write > solid low-level C code and we have to be very careful what we ask our > volunteers to spend their time on. A volunteer developer who isn't excited > about a feature is going to drag her feet and it will sit solidly at the > bottom of the priority list for months, if not years. If a key piece of the > eco-system isn't updated because of this one addition, it means that > potential PHP 5.4 users may have to wait 6, 12, 18 months before they can > migrate to the new version. > > Therefore, low-level engine changes, syntax additions, or entirely new > grammars as is the case here, face an uphill battle. If there is a way to > currently solve the problem without major changes, even if it is an 80% > solution that will weigh heavily against accepting the new code. > > Without broad support and enthusiasm, especially from the people who have > historically been the ones that write the code and track down and fix the > bugs, low-level features like this are doomed, no matter how > well-intentioned they are.
That explanation sheds a lot of light on the general situation, thanks. Something I wanted to ask —regarding resources— is, is GSOC being leveraged this year in any way?. I'm guessing there could be lots of enthusiasm packed there, perhanos not that much for C writing, but for clearing the way for C writers.
