Re: [PDO] PDO2 as a set of PECL extensions, rather than PHP core?

Hi Dan,

Thanks for trying to move the debate on from its impasse. However, I think 
this approach would be impractical because PDO is a core extension - 
something that everyone with PHP installed has access to. It might be OK to 
rely on PECL during the development phase, so long as nobody minds that 
php.net folk can't touch it, but what happens when PDO2's ready to take the 
place of PDO? Normally the PECL extension would be symlinked to PHP source 
in CVS at that point...

So really this would just defer the issue rather than resolve it. We need to 
find a solution at the outset.

Both Andi and Wez wrote something earlier about the CLA only being one 
potential route - would anyone care to share the other alternatives?

- Steph


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Scott" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 3:18 PM
Subject: [PDO] PDO2 as a set of PECL extensions, rather than PHP core?


> Thus far the response to the proposal of a CLA for the spec and code
> for PDO2 has not been particularly positive. I believe the idea of
> PDO2 itself, however, would be very beneficial for the PHP community.
> I would therefore like to put forward another proposal that might
> allow PDO2 to move ahead. Of course, it doesn't have to be considered
> now, if others feel that there is still merit to continuing the CLA
> debate.
>
> Given that some other languages (for example, Perl and Python) have
> successfully developed standardized database interfaces outside of the
> language core, would it be possible to consider an alternate approach
> for PDO2 - develop it outside of the php.net core repository purely as
> a PECL extension? (The Python DBI lives a bit of a double life, really
> - the spec itself is a core PEP but the drivers are all extensions, if
> I understand it correctly).
>
> While this means that a person who compiles PHP themselves will have
> to go to extra lengths to compile PDO2 + the PDO2 drivers they
> require, in practice, many PHP developers and deployers rely on their
> distribution's precompiled packages and the extra step would simply
> become "apt get install php-pdo2-foodb" (or the like). Given that some
> of the commercial database servers already face installation hurdles
> due to their choice to distribute binary client libraries, this is
> probably not that big of a hurdle in comparison to finding and
> installing the right binary client libraries.
>
> As a set of PECL extensions, PDO2 and its drivers would be documented
> in the PHP manual and still be visible on the PHP site; bugs could
> still be filed through the normal PHP bug process; the unit tests
> could still be run and gcov charts could be built to show code
> coverage process; the code could still be stored in the same PHP CVS
> repository. The only difference is that PDO2 and its drivers would be
> extensions.
>
> If there are technical or procedural reasons that this proposal would
> be impossible or unacceptable, I apologize for not anticipating them.
>
> -- 
> Dan Scott
> Laurentian University
>
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