On 16/08/2016 11:11, Lester Caine wrote:
There have been several 'attempts' to drop ext/interbase, all well documented on this list. PHP developers may not think Firebird is very popular, and probably from a PHP base it isn't but it IS used extensively in large areas of the World.
Please carefully read Kalle's motivation for dropping it. It has nothing to do with how popular Firebird is, and everything to do with who is responsible for fixing any serious bugs that crop up *in the ext/interbase code*.
Note as well that dropping it doesn't mean taking away your ability to use it - it will still be on PECL, and many Linux distros won't even change their package name. It's mostly just labelling who is promising to maintain it - as long as it's in core, the promise is "it will be stable in stable versions of PHP, and security maintained in security maintained versions of PHP".
If there is nobody actively maintaining it, that promise is basically a lie, so moving it to PECL is just giving it the more honest label of "it will be maintained as and when someone volunteers the time for a particular issue".
I'm sure everyone agrees is that the ideal situation is *not* to drop it, and instead to find someone willing to commit to maintain it. But there's no point saying it's maintained if nobody is actually performing that role.
Regards, -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP] -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
