Re: Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] DB-1.7.13 (stable) Released.

On 9/24/07, Christian Schmidt <pear.php.net@chsc.dk> wrote: > I was the one who originally proposed the change. My reasons are > explained in the bug report > <http://pear.php.net/bugs/bug.php?id=11581>. > See also the message "[PEAR-DEV] Making old PEAR packages (more) > E_STRICT compatible" from 22 September 2007 on this mailinglist. > > My intention was to suggest a small BC fix. > Hmmmm, well, these changes are likely to *break* BC, not fix it. IMHO leaving some warnings is better than possibly breaking a lot of code. > > Justin Patrin wrote: > > Various PEAR classes *will* break if code is changed to use = rather than =&. > You are right - you cannot replace =& with = in general. In many cases, > though, it doesn't make a difference whether you use = og =&, and in > those cases I suggest using the former in order to be "PHP5 friendly". Sure, it just has to be done very carefully. There were some nasty and subtle bugs in some packages years ago that using =& solved. > > The relevant changes are these (did I miss some?): > > http://cvs.php.net/viewvc.cgi/pear/DB/DB/common.php?r1=1.141&r2=1.142 > > http://cvs.php.net/viewvc.cgi/pear/DB/DB.php?r1=1.87&r2=1.88 > > I must admit that I missed the one in line 1202 of DB.php. In general, > you cannot be sure that the class specified by > $db->fetchmode_object_class does not rely on using references. So it > looks as if that may in fact cause problems - sorry :-/. The other > occurrences deal with instances of DB_Result and DB_common subclasses, > where it doesn't make a difference whether you use =& or = AFAICT. Or > did I miss something? > > If PHP5 friendliness is considered important, the fetchmode_object_class > issue can be handled in other ways. > I think the idea of making PHP4 compatible packages PHP5 "friendly" isn't all that useful. PHP4 packages aren't PHP5 packages and there are some major changes in PHP5 which make PHP4 packages throw warnings. I see this as simply how life is. We do have the procedures in place now to make new packages PHP5-only (and hence friendly) and efforts would be better spent creating these new packages or upgrading old ones rather than making changes to old packages just to make them throw less warnings (and possibly break BC). -- Justin Patrin