Re: PHP 5

On 05 Feb 2002 10:14:47 +0100, Stig S. Bakken wrote: >1. Namespaces: we should migrate our current naming scheme to a >namespace-based one. HTML_Form becomes HTML::Form, and so on. This can >not be done in a portable way without automatically converting files, or >something like that. We could provide a code "downgrading" tool >converting from PHP 5 to PHP 4 syntax, and integrate it in either the >packaging or installation process. +1 for putting a conversion routine in the installation process. >And the $10,000 question: how much work should we put into giving people >a smooth migration path? I would like to get everyone running PHP 5 >ASAP, but this is of course utopic. A lot of people will not install PHP 5 vey quickly, because it will break a lot of their scripts and they simply don't have the time to change them all (*). I expect a big % of people to stick to the latest version of PHP 4 for a pretty long time, until they finally decide to use PHP 5. So I don't think we can make PEAR _only_ compatible with PHP 5 in the short term: IMO it is really nice of us if we change the existing stuff (like DB etc.) in a way, so that it is still compatible to PHP 4 (with some conversion routines during the installation perhaps), but also takes some advantages of the kewl new PHP 5 features. I don't know how far this will work, but hope is not forbidden, no? ;-). All new stuff that comes to PEAR, after a stable version of PHP 5 has been released, does not need to run with PHP 4 of course. - Martin (*) Unless they are one of the start-ups that have more free time as they want. :-) -- Martin Jansen, <mail@martin-jansen.de> http://www.martin-jansen.de/