Re: some thoughts about php 6

On the subject of 64-bit improvement, there was an argument to wait until PHP6 so that extension maintainers had to deal with one extension conversion, but a more broad one (because there will be other things changing). I actually think it is not such a great idea, because when dealing with multiple things to update, it is far easier to break something or mess it up. I want to point out, that although the adoption of PHP picked up the pace, new versions are not adopted that fast. Many leaped over 5.4 to 5.5 because 5.4 does not have a working opcode cache and that is a major no go for almost everyone. Nethertheless, when PHP 6 is released, many will leap from 5.3 or 5.5 straight to it. 5.6 can be a kind of grace period to port and test the extensions, so the majority of them is updated when PHP 6 comes. This will also spread the workload and give a chance for everyone to catch up with the 64 bit support. As part of this effort, there has to be an informational campaign to inform people that extension developers have to convert them. This has to be shown clearly and loudly (php.net front page pinned announcement with linkage to the explanation of what the heck is going on, also we should announce it all on any other channels that are out there). On the case of concerns of Yahoo and alike - it does not really matter, because they have to do this work anyway - sooner or later, but the amount of the required work does not change. Actually, if you cram too many changes in a single release (PHP 6), you end up with even bigger workload, because now you have to implement 64 bit support and other PHP 6 compatibility things - you end up in a state when for extension to work, you have to do all the changes at once without the ability to separately test if you 64 porting was done correctly. You end up with multiple changes in one place and have to debug them all simultaneously. The fact, that some companies still stick with 5.3 and don't update their own code base does not concern the PHP developer team. It does not matter if you do 64 bit support in 5.6 or 6.0 - Yahoo has it's own schedule and they might migrate from 5.3 to 5.5 (well, because 5.4 has issues with opcode cache - it's understandable to skip it over) and that plan may be already in motion. So it will not matter for them if 5.6 has 64 bit support or not. They might just wait for the PHP 6 after 5.5 (and it kind'a makes sense). So, I say you go with the 64 bit improvements for 5.6, set all the things in motion, do the porting docs and make a hell lot of noise about this. I'm willing to help with the information campaign, because this lack of proper 64 bit support has gave me a few "WTF?!" situations when I had to figure out why things do not work and realize it's due to the 64 vs 32 bit issues. Arvids.