[Fwd: Re: PEAR framework changes for PHP5]

Hi PEARs! The following text is just my personal opinion and my personal view on the upcoming things. Please think about the following issues and add your comments (this is adressed to all of you): PHP 5 will bring some cool new features, which should get used by pear packages and the pear framework. too. Following you will find some issues which have to be defined to be prepared for PHP 5. Since maintaners start working on PHP5 versions of their packages, I guess it's time to define new standards, reduce and add features to the PEAR framework. The list neither complete, but just a collection of what I found in my mind right now, nor ordered in any way. Framework issues: - PEAR Error can be obsoleted with the use of exceptions

      - Features of the Error handling can be rebuild/extended in a common exception base class
   - A great amount of PEAR base class features will be obsolete (eg. destructors)
      - But there should be a common base class, i guess, to be able to implement some additional features (e.g. a common versioning method, a common singleton method,...)

Standard definition issues: - Codingstandards have to be changed (correct old ones, add new ones for new features) - As we have the chance, a common error standard has to be defined (regulation of error codes, for example, i guess error code definitions should become a standard in PEAR). - As there are interfaces available now, I guess we should add some templates for common patterns (factory, singleton,...) to the standards. Please try not to let this become another flame war, but add usefull criticism and feedback. Regards, Toby Pierre-Alain Joye wrote:

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 23:17:20 +0100 Tobias Schlitt <tobias@schlitt.info> wrote:

Hi all! I did not find anything real about that on pear-dev and so for want to ask for the status of this? I guess the PEAR error handling should be switched to exceptions and stuff.

Exceptions are not errors or should not be used as PEAR_Error is used now, at least in most cases. I'm not a fan of wide usage of excpetions. That results in a spagetthi mess most of the times ;) This is something that should be debated :)

Is anyone working on that? Are there plans what to do? Have this issues been discussed?

We have got some discussions, no decision or plan yet. I'm not sure we should switch quickly with PEAR itself. At least not in the current branch(1.x). I like to see what will really be php5 (certainly 5.1) and what is redundant between php5 new features and pear. A good example is the Autoloader. At the same times, a nice redesign will be a good thing. As well as some new way to work with the package databases. pierre

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [PEAR-CORE] PEAR framework changes for PHP5 Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 23:36:37 +0100 From: Pierre-Alain Joye <paj@pearfr.org> Organization: Freelancer To: Tobias Schlitt <tobias@schlitt.info> CC: pear-core@lists.php.net References: <401834F0.9010603@schlitt.info> On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 23:17:20 +0100 Tobias Schlitt <tobias@schlitt.info> wrote:

Hi all! I did not find anything real about that on pear-dev and so for want to ask for the status of this? I guess the PEAR error handling should be switched to exceptions and stuff.

Exceptions are not errors or should not be used as PEAR_Error is used now, at least in most cases. I'm not a fan of wide usage of excpetions. That results in a spagetthi mess most of the times ;) This is something that should be debated :)

Is anyone working on that? Are there plans what to do? Have this issues been discussed?

We have got some discussions, no decision or plan yet. I'm not sure we should switch quickly with PEAR itself. At least not in the current branch(1.x). I like to see what will really be php5 (certainly 5.1) and what is redundant between php5 new features and pear. A good example is the Autoloader. At the same times, a nice redesign will be a good thing. As well as some new way to work with the package databases. pierre