Re: The future of PHP - accessory libraries

> Being practical, the vast majority of serious PHP applications will be > running on Linux. If you were to cover RedHat, and .rpm compatible distros > such as SuSE, you would cover the requirements of perhaps the majority of > users. But RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian and FreeBSD already have designated people who do exactly this. For example, have a look here: http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/rawhide/1.0/i386/PByName.html Note the php-* rpms: php-4.0.6-6 php-devel-4.0.6-6 php-imap-4.0.6-6 php-ldap-4.0.6-6 php-manual-4.0.6-6 php-mysql-4.0.6-6 php-odbc-4.0.6-6 php-pgsql-4.0.6-6 And before you go off and complain about all the missing ones, take a look at all the dependencies for the base php rpm: libbz2.so.1 libcrypto.so.2 libcrypt.so.1 libc.so.6 libcurl.so.1 libdb-3.2.so libdl.so.2 libfreetype.so.6 libgdbm.so.2 libgd.so.1.8 libjpeg.so.62 libltdl.so.3 libmm.so.11 libm.so.6 libnsl.so.1 libpam.so.0 libpng.so.2 libpspell-modules.so.1 libpspell.so.4 libresolv.so.2 libssl.so.2 libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 libttf.so.2 libxml2.so.2 libz.so.1 That's a pretty good list. And the Mandrake and Debian packages are every bit as complete. I am not as familiar with SuSE nor the fbsd port, but I would be very surprised if they were not very close to, if not better than, the current RedHat rpms. I don't agree that we should take away the responsibility of creating these binary distributions of PHP from the distribution maintainers out there. If they are not doing a good job, or if there are specific problems with their packaging of PHP, submit a bug report to them. If they determine that something in PHP itself it preventing them from packaging it nicely, they will hopefully let us know and we can address it. > What do you think? Does any of this suggest a practical way forward? Not really no, since I still don't have anything concrete to go on. "I have heard that ...", "someone said that it didn't work..." Stuff like this doesn't really give us anything to sink out teeth into. What exactly is the ISP having trouble with? What is the error message? What sort of setup do they have? Or, is the problem really that they are just more familiar with other technologies and are just feeding you a line to get you to go away? -Rasmus