On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 12:22 AM Nikita Popov <nikita....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 11:25 PM Zeev Suraski <z...@php.net> wrote: > > > > > > > On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 12:02 AM Nikita Popov <nikita....@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > >> This is basically what I have been advocating for a while now already, > >> somewhat hidden between all the other noise of the "namespace-scoped > >> declares" thread. The model I would like to follow are Rust editions ( > >> https://doc.rust-lang.org/edition-guide/editions/index.html). In PHP > >> right now, the way to do this technically would be based on a > >> declare(edition=2020) in every file. I was hoping to make this a > >> per-package declaration instead, but haven't found the perfect way to do > >> this right now. > >> > > > > I think it's similar, but not quite the same, at least as far as what I > > understood from what you were saying on that thread (I just reread it). > > First, I think it's important we don't only focus on what we're going to > > change - but also on what we're going to keep. The motivation should not > > be slow eventual migration from one codebase to another. We would have > > two, long-term supported codebases - a lot closer to C and C++ than to > > different editions of a single language. The distance between them would > > be quite substantial from the get-go - and will likely grow farther as > time > > goes by, similarly to the situation with C and C++. > > > > I think this part is unrealistic from a simple manpower perspective. We > have something like ~2 full time developers working on PHP. Even if you can > rally some additional interest around this idea, I don't think we have the > resources to create a *substantially* different language in any reasonable > amount of time. Doing feature additions and changes to PHP is Hard. Even > simple changes require a fair bit of design and engineering effort to > integrate with the large complexity of the existing language. This would > not change for a hypothetical P++, because we still need to interoperate > with PHP. > > Even if I agreed with the idea (which I'm pretty skeptical about in this > particular form), I really don't think we have the resources to do > something like this. > > Nikita > > I think it should also be pointed out that there's nothing stopping anyone from forking PHP into a new project as Zeev described and maintain feature parity. As I understand, the reason something like this hasn't happened already is because it would involve a ton of work and nobody wants to deal with it. But if you or anyone else does manage to put a team together and make something like this happen as a separate project, I'd certainly have no objection. --Kris
