[php-maint] [Pkg-php-commits] r950 - php5/trunk/debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Jan 01, 2008 at 10:26:12PM -0600, Raphael wrote:
> On 01/01/2008, Steve Langasek <vorlon at debian.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 04:07:11AM +0000, Raphael Geissert wrote:
> > > Added Suggests: php5-timezonedb to all the SAPIs

> > Why?

> The php-timezonedb package replaces the built-in timezone data with
> the 'latest' available.
> I decided to make it a Suggests so people are even more aware of it
> and probably install it so the scripts work with accurate timezone
> data.
> This change can of course be reversed and I won't object.

> Actually, the whole timezonedb package will only be useful in stable
> if the user also adds the volatile repository to the sources.list so
> the package is updated ASAP and when stable updates are made (so the
> php package itself doesn't require and update, only the timezonedb
> one).

> I'm sorry if I'm not very clear expressing my POV right now, but I'm
> tired right now (will try to clarify anything tomorrow).

Hmm, I'm not particularly happy with this, for several reasons.  First, we
don't recommend any other extension packages, and there are probably several
of them that are of broader interest than this one.  Second, this means
we're duplicating functionality between the php-timezonedb package and the
SAPI packages, and I don't like that kind of duplication.  Third, the use of
an internal TZ database in PHP is *itself* duplication; we should only need
one copy of the TZ data in Debian, in the tzdata package, and everything
else should be able to use that at runtime, instead of having a separate
copy to update for each language and database engine.

I think I would prefer to either see this made a hard dependency of the SAPI
packages and just scrap the built-in data completely, or (best) get the
whole timezonedb code scrapped in favor of getting things to work with the
stock glibc functions.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org