Re: Re: Status of a stable ISAPI??

Interesting observations, Rasmus. I thought I heard that some developers at Zend were invited to Redmond to be enlightened about ISAPI? Furthermore, didn't they mention that they were expecting a big improvement in the stability of the ISAPI module as a result of this meeting? I have no recollection of where I read this so take what I say with a grain of salt until you hear otherwise. At any rate, it would seem a better strategy to seek such invitations from Microsoft than to throw alot of effort at reverse engineering the black box? Regards, Paul Meagher ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rasmus Lerdorf" <rasmus@php.net> To: "Eric R. Gavin" <jedi@tstonramp.com> Cc: <php-windows@lists.php.net> Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 2:31 PM Subject: Re: [PHP-WIN] Re: Status of a stable ISAPI?? > Windows development is tough because it includes a lot of black box > programming. You send stuff into the various M$ APIs and it spews stuff > back at you and from that you try to guess what is happening in the black > box. On UNIX systems you can trace all the way down to the kernel level > and definitively figure out exactly what is happening. This removes all > the guesswork and the resulting code is more stable. > > The second issue is that we have about a 50:1 ratio of UNIX developers to > Windows developers who volunteer their time to PHP development. I think > the problem is simply that historically UNIX developers have always worked > on open code and they take pride in contributing to projects like PHP. > The average Windows developer has a different mindset which for some > reason rarely results in significant code contributions to projects like > PHP. > > The third issue is that in the Windows world there is a very clear and > distinct separation between the software vendor and the software user. > The vendor writes the code, the user buys it and bickers at the vendor > when it doesn't work. This is contrary to the way open source software > development works. As a user of an open source tool like PHP you are part > of the process. It doesn't matter whether you can write code, you can > contribute by helping with the documentation, writing well-prepared and > concise bug reports, testing release candidates as they appear or helping > new users on the various mailing lists. Many people who are used to the > standard vendor/user model of proprietary software aren't used to this and > they do occasionally piss off the developers of open source projects like > PHP by demanding things be fixed or they will take their business > elsewhere... Go figure. > > But, at the technical level, this has nothing to do with being pissed off > at anybody, nor is it a lack of financial resources. Money rarely > translates to code. It is purely a lack of people who understand all the > intricate pitfalls of ISAPI and the other related M$ internals that is > necessary to make the PHP-ISAPI version robust. We also lack clear and > reproducable PHP-ISAPI bug reports. Most of the ones we get just say that > "sometimes it breaks". That doesn't exactly give us much to go on. Try > to do a bit of legwork and narrow down exactly under which conditions it > breaks. If it is intermittent, try to figure out if you can get it to > happen more frequently in certain circumstances, or if you can eliminate > the problem by removing something. ie. shoulder some of the initial > trial-and-error discovery phase that any problem requires before it can be > solved. > > So, what can you do if you have a strong desire to see better Windows > support in PHP? Since what we really need are more strong Windows > developers, try to find us some of those. Perhaps you have some on your > staff. Encourage them to get involved with PHP. If you have plenty of > cash lying around, hire such a Windows developer and assign him the task > of helping out. Throwing money at existing PHP developers to get them to > change their priorities could also help, but that means they are not > working on something else that they previously deemed to be of higher > priority for whatever reason. I would rather see more developer resources > than a focus shift of the existing ones. > > -Rasmus > > On Fri, 7 Sep 2001, Eric R. Gavin wrote: > > > > Does the PHP staff lack resources to develop the Win32 environment > > > sufficiently? (I would help if I knew how) > > > Is there a database of current issues, owner of issue and due date? > > (normal > > > project management stuff) > > > > Heh... couldn't resist a sarcastic post ^_^ > > > > I think that all the PHP coders out there are just pissed off that MS won a > > good part of their court case. *snicker* > > > > DOWN WITH THE EVIL BEHEMOTH!!! *lol* > > > > Anyway, to hopefully add SOME value to this thread. I've basically been > > "reading between the lines" on this issue and it seems that there just isn't > > any real concern to fix this for Windows NT. It sounds like it works pretty > > well with Windows 2000 and I wouldn't be surprised if "the PHP powers that > > be" are basically trying to hold their breath and hope everybody moves to > > W2K. > > > > Ironically, that kind of behavior (fixing a problem by upgrading to the > > latest and greatest) is the same kind of behavior that slashdot.com will > > ENDLESSLY berate Bill Gates for. > > > > Eric R. Gavin > > [this has been an extremely sarcastic post] > > > -- > PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-windows-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > For additional commands, e-mail: php-windows-help@lists.php.net > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net > >