Re: [PHP-DEV] Let's make a 5.7 release

Hi all,

On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 9:48 AM, Andrea Faulds <[email protected]> wrote:

> I’ve kept putting this off, but given the current “move phpng to master”
> vote, I really can’t delay this any longer.
>
> It looks like PHP 7 is going to happen and phpng will be the base of that.
> While we could move straight to PHP 7 after the release of PHP 5.6, I think
> there is some merit in having one more 5.x release, namely 5.7, which would
> follow our usual release process and come out next year.
>
> PHP 7, as a major release, is likely to take much longer than a usual
> minor release. While some people might think one year is realistic, I
> highly doubt that, as I suspect phpng will not be the only new feature PHP
> 7 will contain. Major releases come with major changes, and I suspect some
> others will crop up, and these might delay the release. Because it will
> probably take two to three years, having a minor release in the meantime
> means userland developers won’t be starved of new features which don’t need
> to be in a major release and could be in a minor.
>
> Another point is that PHP 7 is probably going to break
> backwards-compatibility more significantly than minors would. For starters,
> phpng will break extension compatibility, and new proposals are likely to
> break userland compatibility as well. By making 5.7 happen, developers will
> have more time to switch to PHP 7 and can keep their existing codebases for
> longer.
>
> As PHP 7 may break backwards-compatibility, 5.7 gives us a chance to add
> deprecation warnings and such to help people prepare for 7.
>
> Finally, it is a fallback. If we do end up targeting 7 to come out next
> year, then if serious issues cause delays to 7, we will have a less
> ambitious and working new release to fall back on.
>
> I should clarify that I don’t wish to delay phpng at all, I am very much
> in favour of it and excited about it, nor do I expect this to delay it. We
> can simply work on two releases at once: PHP 7, an ambitious BC-breaking
> release to come out later, and PHP 5.7, a safe, non-breaking release that
> will come out next year with the usual schedule.
>

+1

Having 5.7 would be nicer for users and developers.
Let's have 5.7 and master branch for PHP7 now.

I would like to have +1 year dev time for PHP7. However, it may be good
idea to release
5.7 and 7.0 at the same time. I suppose big changes may be implemented in
7.x.

Regards,

--
Yasuo Ohgaki
[email protected]