Re: No more RFC implementations during beta phase

On 24.9.2024 17:14:20, Christoph M. Becker wrote:

Hi all, I want to suggest that we do not allow any RFC implementations to land during beta phase. In my opinion, the remaining time to thoroughly check and address possibly overlooked issues is way too short otherwise. For instance, the implementation of "Deprecate proprietary CSV escaping mechanism"[1] landed just prior to 8.4.0beta1[2]. However, a serious issue with that implementation had only be fixed about two weeks ago[3], and the discussion what to do about that[4] is still unresolved. So in this case, the implementation would have been right in time, but still somewhat late. An even more problematic example would be the "Support object type in BCMath" RFC[5]. This has only been implemented shortly prior to 8.4.0beta5[6], so there has been almost no time to address overlooked issues prior to 8.4.0RC1. A pretty serious bug in the implementation[7] has just been fixed[8] without any real chance to discuss the actual fix. I'm not arguing that the fix should be reverted, but I'm rather pointing out that late RFC implementations could easily lead to those issues over and over again. Thoughts? [1] <https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecations_php_8_4#deprecate_proprietary_csv_escaping_mechanism> [2] <https://github.com/php/php-src/commit/c818d944cf998b3151e4b312d655c51223612c4e> [3] <https://github.com/php/php-src/commit/f756b96e06db29a978bbf3ad3a5c52f6d0d97c64> [4]<https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/15569#issuecomment-2354447087>ff [5]<https://wiki.php.net/rfc/support_object_type_in_bcmath> [6] <https://github.com/php/php-src/commit/fad899e5662d0a929d8462dd8239b0489dd9b53f> [7]<https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/15968> [8]<https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/16021> Christoph

Hey Christoph, I certainly can see where you are coming from. But that's mostly what is defining the beta phase - an evolving version of PHP, but where it's clear which features will make it (i.e. all RFCs have to be accepted by then) - a period where people can start introducing support for the next PHP version without being surprised at yet unknown breaks. The period of stabilization of the new features is the RC phase. If you feel we don't have enough time to stabilize, I'd rather enlarge the RC phase (possibly at the expense of 1-2 betas). I consider it important to retain the policy of submitting RFC implementations during beta, so that implementations are not rushed and thoroughly reviewed before being merged. The cutoff for RFCs being accepted is the first beta, but a lot of RFC implementations don't quite yet have the desired quality for merging. It's important to allow implementations to mature before merging. Thanks, Bob