Re: minimum PHP version

On 3 Jan 2012, at 08:02, A.L.E.C wrote: > On 02.01.2012 23:16, Daniel O'Connor wrote: >>> I am not sure how aware many of you guys are of how many PHP 4 users we >>> still have using the PEAR installer >>> >> >> We're not really clear on it - got stats? It would be good to see the >> numbers. > Myself and Till never finished the project that was all about sucking up the access log and do graphs. You can grep the access logs on pear.php.net to see what I mean. > Not about PEAR, but about PHP-supported servers according to > http://reviews.gcoupon.com/browse/servers/Website_Servers.html > > PHP4: 17603 (17%) > PHP5: 88755 (83%) > > BC-break rule was good 5 years ago, now we should get rid of it. > > - Most likely none of PHP4 users care about updates, > - This rule stops some PEAR developers from being more active (like me), > - This rule stops progress also because new packages (*2) are not used > immidietly by distributions, and the process requires some time to > stabilise the new code. > > Let's do it, please. ALEC, even if we decided to do this for the PEAR installer then you have to remember that we are upgrading the PHP version and not really allowing a full blown BC break, the package would still work as intended for people on PHP 5 without any extra effort on their part. We'd not be dropping the BC breaking rule and thus allowing people to break APIs between stable releases of packages :-) The BC rule is still as valid as it was 5 years ago as it was never focused on stopping people from updating their packages from PHP 4 to 5 only but against API breaks. You will still have to make a new package if you intend to break BC beyond just upgrading PHP... Which means if you are moving from PEAR Errors to Exceptions you need a new package, as an example. It is still core to PEAR to keep BC in general, even if it seemingly means it takes longer to get newer packages into distributions. - Helgi