Re: Are PECL modules preferable?

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020, at 1:22 PM, Reinis Rozitis wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Mike Schinkel > > > > That is a utopian sentiment, but not valid in the corporate world that uses > > managed hosting because they are focused on operating their business and > > not on having to spend time, resources and management expertise in > > securing and running servers on the Internet. > > Not sure if using "corporate world" in this argument is good either. > "Corporate world" typically doesn't want to change anything hence ~50% > of the world still runs on PHP5. > > You will probably get more usage/adoption of the particular new feature > in a php5/7 compatible php pecl extension rather than waiting for a > managed hosting to upgrade to PHP 8/NEXT (see something like imagick, > memcache or redis - not in a core at all, but probably rarely any host > without those). > > As for the "ensures many PHP developers will _never_ have access to > them" - nowadays when everything can run in containerized environments > where you can setup/configure php in whatever manner you like or the > software needs, it usually isn't a problem anymore. Those two arguments seem contradictory. The people who can happily containerize things and pick their own version are the ones who could also toss in another PECL library if they wanted; and the ones on crappy shared (or corporate IT legacy) hosting where they don't control the version also couldn't control the PECL libraries they have. People stuck in the past are stuck in the past. :-) Also, hosts that run modern PHP versions are way waaaaay more readily available than they once were: http://phpversions.info/new-and-shiny/ At this point, anyone stuck on an old PHP version either has ample ability to move to a host that isn't robbing them blind, or else they're trapped by corporate IT policies that wouldn't allow anything written today to be used for 5 years anyway, no matter where it is. --Larry Garfield