Re: PHP6's future

Chris Stockton wrote:

Hello, On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Kalle Sommer Nielsen <kalle@php.net> wrote:

But what is every ones input on the matter of attempting to boost PHP6's development? I'm willing to give my part in whatever I can to help getting up on the feet to get this ball rolling.

I think that some more focus on PHP6 would be great! Though I am not sure if 5.2 could stop development (although perhaps a resource shift to 5.3/6, starving new 5.2 features/backports for 5.2 security/bug fixes only). I would hate to see PHP6 become P(erl)HP6 :p

I have the same feeling on 5.2. While I'm very happy with PHP 5.3 (especially with the addition of closures), it takes a nontrivial amount of work to migrate a web app from PHP 5.2 to 5.3. The PHP 5.3 compatibility issue for the Drupal CMS (http://drupal.org/node/360605), for example, had over 200 comments, and it took about 9 months before a patch was committed to the current version of Drupal in September (see comment 158). That's not the only example, but it's a prominent one that comes to my mind. It makes sense to shift resources, but it's way too soon IMHO to stop doing security and bug fixes for 5.2.