Re: [PEAR-QA] minimum PHP version

On 3 Jan 2012, at 08:02, A.L.E.C wrote:

> On 02.01.2012 23:16, Daniel O'Connor wrote:
>>> I am not sure how aware many of you guys are of how many PHP 4 users we
>>> still have using the PEAR installer
>>> 
>> 
>> We're not really clear on it - got stats? It would be good to see the
>> numbers.
> 

Myself and Till never finished the project that was all about sucking up the access log and do graphs. You can grep the access logs on pear.php.net to see what I mean.

> Not about PEAR, but about PHP-supported servers according to
> http://reviews.gcoupon.com/browse/servers/Website_Servers.html
> 
> PHP4: 17603 (17%)
> PHP5: 88755 (83%)
> 
> BC-break rule was good 5 years ago, now we should get rid of it.
> 
> - Most likely none of PHP4 users care about updates,
> - This rule stops some PEAR developers from being more active (like me),
> - This rule stops progress also because new packages (*2) are not used
> immidietly by distributions, and the process requires some time to
> stabilise the new code.
> 
> Let's do it, please.

ALEC, even if we decided to do this for the PEAR installer then you have to remember that we are upgrading the PHP version and not really allowing a full blown BC break, the package would still work as intended for people on PHP 5 without any extra effort on their part.

We'd not be dropping the BC breaking rule and thus allowing people to break APIs between stable releases of packages :-)
The BC rule is still as valid as it was 5 years ago as it was never focused on stopping people from updating their packages from PHP 4 to 5 only but against API breaks.

You will still have to make a new package if you intend to break BC beyond just upgrading PHP... Which means if you are moving from PEAR Errors to Exceptions you need a new package, as an example. 
It is still core to PEAR to keep BC in general, even if it seemingly means it takes longer to get newer packages into distributions.

- Helgi