Re: Branching PHP6

On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Julien Pauli <jpauli@php.net> wrote: > Hey , > > We've been talking about PHP6 for several weeks now. > > From what I understand, we agreed on : > > - We must release a new major version, ASAP I'd say > - It should be named "PHP6" > - It should break BC where needed, and introduce new concepts > - The main concept to concentrate on is Unicode implementation > - All ideas have been grouped at > https://wiki.php.net/ideas/php6 > - We go for a 2 year developpment iteration > > > All in one, 5.6 is going to be released in few months, and we now must > concentrate on PHP6. > > For this, there are two needs : > - Start writing RFCs, PHP6 specific, and start debating ideas on an > "official" basis (RFCs + mail discussions) > - Branch PHP6 , so that we can start hacking and get more motivations. > > Thoughts about how/when to branch PHP6 ? > I would suggest not creating a separate branch and instead declare that master is to become PHP6 - branch only once we get close to doing releases / feature freeze. (Basically, how it we already do it for the minor versions, the initial development happens on master). This would avoid having to merge yet another branch (four active branches is quite enough, I think). If we decide to also have a PHP 5.7 release (which, according to various OTR discussions, isn't particularly certain), we can branch that off PHP-5.6 lateron. From what I understood, if we want to do a 5.7 release it will be light on feature additions and be mainly concerned with paving the group for PHP 6 (deprecations, compatibility, etc). And also, I would strongly suggest to drop the focus on unicode - or any other feature in particular. We need a new major version, regardless of whether it offers magical unicode support (or only non-magical unicode support). Absence of significant progress in that direction should not be a show-stopper for a PHP6 release. Thanks, Nikita