how to deal with php5 only packages (was: [PEPr] Comment on Networking::GeoIP)

Tomas V.V.Cox wrote:

The movement to PHP 5 is the definitive thing to make the PEAR proyect a success. Mostly because of two reason in my pov: 1) Developers who moves to PHP5 are in general terms, people who knows how PHP works and how to code strictly, we want them here. 2) Nowadays we're living a versions fight in Linux distributions, which will mean that the second day PHP5 final would be announced, distros will start shipping it by default.

Well its not a question imho that PHP5 is big for PEAR. Afterall we lobbied for most of this stuff ourselves. The question is more about timing. For one we need to get a feel for how PHP5 behaves in the real world and PHP5 itself needs to stabalize. Unfortunately I have a feeling this will pan out similar to how things did in PHP4, so I would say we should determine for which PHP version we plan to allow stable php5 only releases (note we can surely have php5 only packages before, just not stable). This version is obviously not written in stone and can be changed as we play around with PHP5. I propose to wait for PHP 5.1.0 before we allow stable PHP5 only packages. I think generally until this point we should discourage PHP5 only packages that only make use of syntax sugar. However PHP5 only packages that make use of the new and unique features of PHP5 are very important so that we have a testbed to figure out how to best address PHP5. BTW: We want PHP4 compatible packages to work in E_ALL. Packages that are PHP5 only need to work with E_STRICT imho. This however means that they cannot use PEAR.php. regards, Lukas Smith smith@backendmedia.com _______________________________ BackendMedia www.backendmedia.com berlin@backendmedia.com Linn Zwoch Smith GbR Pariser Str. 44 D-10707 Berlin Tel +49 30 83 22 50 00 Fax +49 30 83 22 50 07