Re: [RFC] Deprecate PEAR/PECL & Replace with composer/pickle

On 09/09/2016 11:01, Tony Marston wrote:

Sent: Friday, September 09, 2016 12:55 AM

To: Tony Marston ; internals@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Deprecate PEAR/PECL & Replace with composer/pickle Hi!

There should be a rule that nothing can be deprecated unless there is a viable, stable, fully functioning and fully supported alternative. I do not like the way that some people simply say "I do not like this. I do not use this. Nobody should be using this. Let's deprecate it"

You can have any rules you like, but if the original author is not interested in the tool anymore, the only options you have are: 1. Support it yourself 2. Pay/beg/bribe/persuade somebody to do it for you 3. Failing that, use it unsupported or switch to another tool That's not only how the open source works, that's how everything works - try to get support for out-of-support commercial software (or out-of-support hardware for that matter) and see if it's any easier. So yes, it is "typical" as you note - as typical as the life can be :) That said, if the tool is useful and being used, I completely agree that we should make effort in keeping it supported. But we should also account for the possibility of that effort not being successful.

Then I suggest that you take steps to ensure that any drop-in replacement offers all the facilities of the current PEAR/PECL library. Anything less would probably annoy a largenumber of existing users. PEAR/PECL will still be available and working if the RFC passes. For most users nothing will change at all. It will only change for users installing PEAR/PECL from source along with PHP. They'll have the choice to either manually install PEAR/PECL or use something else. Installing PEAR/PECL is already documented : https://pear.php.net/manual/en/installation.getting.php. This workflow already works.

what other steps should be taken ?

-- Tony Marston