[PEPr] Comment on RFC::Drop requirement of renaming a package when migrating from PHP 4.x to PHP 5.x

I think the title of this RFC is incorrect. I'm not aware of any requirement to rename a package when migrating from PHP4 to PHP5 - the standards state that once a package has reached 'stable,' breaking backwards compatibility requires changing the package name. I don't believe this has anything to do with what PHP version the package requires. Of course the minimum PHP version listed in the package.xml for an individual release can eliminate the risk of upgrading to a package that uses different features of PHP. But the minimum PHP version in package.xml has no bearing on the code written by the end users of a package whom have written code to an exposed api. Utilizing the API version of the package release in combination with the minimum PHP version, as suggested in Greg's proposal sent to the PEAR-DEV list, is the correct way to handle this in my opinion. But this would require altering the PEAR installer to act like Pyrus/PEAR2 (introducing the 'paranoia' setting). This would warn end-users before upgrading a package with a major api version number change, and would eliminate backwards compatibility fears when blindly upgrading a package. See this for details: http://markmail.org/message/ftq47ffckg2uhkl7 I think Greg's proposal is the best way to get what we all want — accommodating the backwards compatibility concerns while allowing progressive development of existing and future packages. -- http://pear.php.net/pepr/pepr-proposal-show.php?id=606