RE: [PHP-DEV] Re: Hold off 5.4

> -----Original Message----- > From: Derick Rethans [mailto:derick@php.net] > Sent: Friday, November 26, 2010 12:00 PM > To: Kalle Sommer Nielsen > Cc: Zeev Suraski; Johannes Schlüter; Andi Gutmans; Jani Taskinen; > davey@php.net; PHP Internals > Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Hold off 5.4 > > On Fri, 26 Nov 2010, Kalle Sommer Nielsen wrote: > > > 2010/11/25 Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com>: > > > I think that skipping to a major version is a good idea. > > > > > > Two key reasons I think that: > > > > > > 1.  It'll help us break the evil spell of the 6 version number. > > >  Honestly, I'm not so certain we'll have major engine rewrites the > > > size of what we've seen in PHP 3/4/5 going forward.  Sure, I have a > > > track record for saying that in the past before PHP 5, but this time > > > I *really* think we've reached an evolutionary stage :).  Even if > > > I'm wrong and we'd have a major rewrite happening, I don't think any > > > of us is seeing it any time soon. > > > > I also think that its appealing to skip to version 6 to break that > > spell once and for all. > > I think it's a bad idea. We'd just be scaring users because "new major > version" = break. We're not breaking a thing (or atleast, try not to). > And think about distrbutions that'd want to wait til 6.1 or something. I *think* that a good message is always easy to convey. 'Moving from 5.3 to 7.0 is a no brainer and is effortless' is easy to convey. Of course, I could be wrong... > We should reserve major versions for BC breaks. Just like we've always done. > I don't see the point of changing this, as it feels to me that you just want to > change it because you want to change it. Even if we don't move a major version (or two) now, I think we should reconsider that major-version == major-breakage linkage. I'm not sure it holds true any longer, and may push us to be stuck in the 5.x realm for a very long time (as a matter of fact, we already are - since mid 2004 - with no change in sight). > Now, *if*, we would introduce breaking changes, skipping 6 might be a good > plan (and go straight to 7), but I don't see any sort of compelling reason why > you'd want to go to 6/7 now. No compelling reason. It's almost at the 'why not' level, and the only two reasons I have are the ones I stated in my previous email. We could go with 5.4 and the world won't stop spinning, I just think that going with 7.0 will have some benefits. Zeev