Re: RIP PHP 4?

On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:52:27 -0500, Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com> wrote: > On Monday 09 July 2007, chris# wrote: >> OK. I can't help but notice the overall underwhelming reception to PHP5 >> (mostly by ISP's). Which begs the question /why/? Shouldn't /that/ be > the >> question? Or maybe I should ask: Has anybody bothered to find out why > the >> majority of PHP installers /prefer/ PHP4? I am quite sure that if those >> questions were answered, the poll you are attempting to take now would > be >> moot. Don't you? > > I don't claim to have made a scientific study of the subject, but from > what > I've seen so far web hosts fall into one of the following categories: > > 1) We offer PHP 5 only. > 2) We offer PHP 5 and PHP 4 as an option if you ask/tweak .htaccess. > 3) We offer PHP 4 and PHP 5 as an option if you ask/tweak .htaccess. > 4) We offer PHP 4 and PHP 5, and you explicitly pick one when signing up. > 5) We don't offer PHP 5 yet because we haven't figured out how to do that > in > cPanel and we're afraid of breaking stuff. Hello, and thanks for taking the time to respond. > > I've actually been pleasantly surprised to find that group 5 seems to be a > minority. There's a fair number of hosts in groups 3 and 4 that, I think, > artificially deflate PHP 5's numbers. That's made developers gun-shy. I have noticed a growing trend to offer both. Frankly, I think that you're correct in #5 being in the (growing) minority. But I believe this is all due to the lack of how-to/documentation for providing a reliable process to run multiple versions of PHP on the same boxen. Truth be known; I spent two entire days searching for a reliable and straight-forward approach to doing just that. The closest thing I discovered in meeting that goal was running two PHP installs in two different directories (PHP4 as base install in default dir: php and PHP5 in same $prefix but in php5 dir) then running php as Apache lib and assigning libphp5.so to PHP5 enabled folder (or extension - .php5) and assigning libphp4.so as default and for .php. This works fine for *BSD because of the way *BSD loads libraries. But not so for most other *NIX like OS's - most notably Linux. So, while this method will work fine for me and my 50+ *BSD server farm. It isn't /even/ a good "generic" method for the Internet at large. Probably the best solution would be for one of the seasoned developers whom undoubtedly runs more than one version on his/her boxen as a necessity, to share their experience in achieving this working environment. Better still; posting this prominently on the front page of the php.net site (or the documentation page). That way it would eliminate (or nearly) all fear of offering more (or all) versions of PHP, and PHP4 would simply fade away as ppl can more easily migrate to 5, or 6 without giving it a second thought. > > How are the Nexen stats compiled? Johannes has said that he "has > statistics" > showing that PHP 5 has 60% of the market, not 20%. > > Quoth Ben Franklin, "there are likes, damned lies, and statistics." But > at > this point I don't think the situation is as dire as everyone seems to > think. > The huge flood of hosts we had signing up with GoPHP5 in the first day, > combined with the other hosts I've spoken to, suggest that simple inertia > is > the problem at this point, not simply "no hosts offer it". I would also contend that there is also an incentive to listing their site on your page, as it gives them higher visibility. :) This, of course skews the results. Thanks again for the response. > > -- > Larry Garfield AIM: LOLG42 > larry@garfieldtech.com ICQ: 6817012 > > "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of > exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, > which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to > himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the > possession > of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." -- > Thomas > Jefferson > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php ///////////////////////////////////////////////////// Service provided by hitOmeter.NET internet messaging! .