Re: bundling libxml2

On 27 Jun 2003 12:25:39 -0400 Sterling Hughes <sterling@bumblebury.com> wrote: > Hi, > > So I figure I'll restart this discussion. There are a couple of reasons > I want to bundle libxml2: > > 1) XML support is crucial. You may not like XML, but its the standard > for data exchange these days, and is incredibly important when > interoperating with external services. A PHP installation should simply > not exist without XML support, if it does, then imho we've done > something wrong. Applications that are distributed need to rely on > certain features in PHP, XML is one such feature. I think this much has > already been agreed upon. > > 2) Libxml2 may be installed everywhere, but the version we rely upon > isn't available everywhere. As witnessed by a message to the list by > michael, and a problem that someone else had over IRC. Its fine to > allow people to use external versions of libxml2, however, we need a > recent version to operate. For example, schema support is pretty > essential, as its becoming the new DTD format for XML (and is required > for proper SOAP support). > > Its further helpful that users can rely on a certain implementation of > libxml2 distributed with a certain version of PHP. > > Anyhow, I thought I'd again bring this up before the beta. What do > people think? I am +1 on bundling libxml2. I think Sterling is right - PHP should have a decent XML support "by default". XML is truly used a lot around the web development today, and I think PHP needs a better competitiveness to other languages, XML-wise. -- Maxim Maletsky maxim@php.net