[php-maint] [PHP-DEV] Re: [PHP-DEV] PHP 5.3.9 and is_a changes

[devis at lucato.it]

Hi,

I have always disliked the lack of modern packages on Debian/Ubuntu distros,
I feel like minor are misused as major versions, with an exaggerated fear to
upgrade. It's like building web sites for IE6 because people are not allowed
to upgrade to IE9, very frustrating for developers and hard to explain to
stakeholders. (OT: so I welcomed Chrome/FF choice to bump major versions
very frequently).

Why can Ubuntu only support 5.3.x and not simply 5.x ?  As far as I can see
BC will be guaranteed, PHP maintainers are really committed to it, and only
a new major version would be so problematic as many suggest.

As a user, I would really encourage to include the latest stable 5.x and
provide to the community all the available 5.x upgrade during the next 5
years (5.4, 5.5 etc).  Those 105 php apps should be maintained or removed,
not used as an excuse to slow down the community.

Then, if a PHP 6 will ever be released, then someone will rightly wonder
"should we include PHP 6 in the next LST ?"

- my .02 -


On 24 October 2011 14:39, Brad Proctor <bproctor2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Just my two cents,
>
> Most likely someone that has a system that they expect to last for five
> years is going to set it up and forget about it. So they probably don't care
> that it's up to date.  They just want it to work.
>
> If not they'll likely either compile their own php or be updating their
> system long before five years is up.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Oct 24, 2011, at 3:21 AM, sean finney <seanius at seanius.net> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 03:36:04PM -0700, Clint Byrum wrote:
> >> I appreciate the sentiments of all who have weighed in on this, and I
> >> do want to make sure that we are paying attention to the greater PHP
> >> community's needs, not just Ubuntu's users. Shipping really old PHP
> >> versions is definitely not what we want to do.
> >
> > At the same time, in 5 years I don't think 5.4 will be that much "newer"
> > feeling than a late 5.3 release, both will likely not be supported by
> > the PHP authors, and people will complain that it's out of date no
> > matter what.  So imo it's ultimately a matter of which version is more
> > stable and can be better supported by the package maintainers and
> security
> > teams in question.  I don't yet have an opinion on that, but would defer
> > to other members of the debian team if they did.
> >
> > And note that just because it's the default/supported version does not
> mean
> > that those distro-users are left up the creek without a paddle.  Both
> ubuntu
> > and debian provide multiple avenues for stable/LTS users to get newer
> software
> > installed from backport/ppa type repositories, and they're also free to
> > install from source if those packages do not meet their needs.
> >
> >> 4) We need it *at least* in Debian experimental, preferrably in
> >> Debian unstable.  I have not discussed this at all with the Debian PHP
> >> maintainers, so this is a big unknown. I've cc'd them for their comment.
> >> I do see that 5.4.0 beta is in experimental as of yesterday, so I
> suspect
> >> this will happen naturally.
> >
> > I'm not sure we have a solid plan/timeline on this, but FYI if you sync'd
> the
> > last 5.3.x version from us the source package was slightly fubar'd
> (somehow
> > got turned into a native package).  We'll probably fix it with an epoch'd
> > upload or just wait until 5.4 is ready enough for unstable, but I don't
> think
> > we've decided on which yet.
> >
> >
> >    sean
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
>
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