Re: What is our definition of a "Backward Compatibility Break"

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 9:54 PM, Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com> wrote: > On 09/10/2012 12:00 PM, Anthony Ferrara wrote: > >> I chose it for that specific reason. The line is blurry if taken literally >> (which many do)... > > It can't possibly be an absolute rule. If you take it completely > literally then we wouldn't be able to fix bugs either. Every change has > some effect that may or may not affect users. > > I know we are mostly geeks here and geeks love structure and rules > without exceptions to fall back on so they don't have to think so much > and can end arguments simply by pointing at a set of hard rules everyone > follows. But this really doesn't work that well in the real world. The > real world isn't binary. It is a complicated analog world with many many > levels of gray between right and wrong, between minor and major BC break > and between peoples' expectations and their personal uses of PHP. I'd like to point out two things here: a) The current releaseprocess RFC [1] says that "Backward compatibility must be kept" in minor version increments (5.4 -> 5.5). Seeing the discussion above, may I rephrase this to "Only minor backwards compatibility breaks allowed"? It seems that we agree that smaller breaks are okay, just no big stuff. I think that's what was meant all along there, but phrased a little bit too conservatively. b) In the PHP 5.5 thread Pierre said the following: > There is o 5.5 branch, there is master. Master is the development > branch and as such can have such breakages. It does not mean that we > have these BC breaks in 5.5. 5.5 should be based on 5.4 with the > feature additions and improvements we want in, but definitively not > with BC breaks. This is concerning me a bit. Does this mean that PHP 5.5 will be branched off PHP 5.4 and we will then backport features from master? If so, this would seem like a Very Bad Idea to me, from a purely technical point of view. Unless I'm much mistaken this would have to be done manually (git is of no help here) and would be a very tedious and fragile business. Before Pierre said that I was under the impression that PHP 5.5 will be branched off master, which would make a lot more sense to me. Could someone clarify how it will be done? [1]: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/releaseprocess