Re: The future of PHP -- accessory libraries

> Hi folks > > I asked my ISP to flesh out their negative comments about adding libraries > to PHP. > > This is their reply - is there anything in this, or are they > misunderstanding the situation? > > >>>>>>>>> > We run servers. We want to compile stuff from source, for obvious reasons! > As such, the question is simple and obvious: why does so much in PHP rely > on the core's compile-time. Why can't there be run-time or DSO inclusion > later on, as with Perl. Basically, PHP has really screwed up in this > monolythic design which was all very well when it was a simple templating > system, but now it's grown to a full-grown language, the scalability, > flexibility and namespace issues are becoming untennable. I note that > something called "Pear" appears in later compilations of the PHP core. I > assume this is some attempt at including Perl's library system and, > eventually, a CPAN-a-like? > >>>>>>>>>>> > > I'm not so sure why they prefer to compile from source - why wouldn't they > trust a professional distro? Well, I tend to prefer compile from source as well. I guess they simply don't realize that you can compile most of the extensions as shared libraries and configure what should be loaded at runtime in the php.ini file. So it looks like this is mostly a documentation issue. We have not done a good job educating the ISPs out there. But they should have been able to figure this out by looking at how PHP is packaged by the various distribution vendours. -Rasmus