Re: [PECL-DEV] official dead pecl extensions

On Feb 25, 2010, at 11:05 AM, Christopher Jones wrote:
> Philip Olson wrote:
> > On Feb 25, 2010, at 10:44 AM, Christopher Jones wrote:
> >> Philip Olson wrote:
> >>> Greetings all,
> >>>
> >>> The following PECL extensions have been tagged as "dead" according to the PHP manual, and the conservative criteria used includes extensions that lack releases (typically these are extensions moved from core to PECL), or perhaps it clearly seems dead/deprecated. Here's the list:
> >>>
> >>>  classkit, fam, fdf, hw, iisfunc, java, msession, nis, notes, qtdom, session_pgsql, swf, and w32api
> >>>
> >>> There are probably other dead [and unmaintained] extensions but who knows, maybe a release from 2003 still works?
> >>>
> >>> All suggestions and comments for dealing with dead PECL extensions are encouraged and welcome! So far the manual pages remain with a link to the SVN repository of said extensions.
> >>>
> >>> Regards,
> >>> Philip
> >>>
> >>> P.S. I just noticed that java isn't in PECL SVN, so not sure what to think of this yet.
> >> Hi Philip,
> >>
> >> What does the "tagging" actually do?  http://docs.php.net/manual/en/book.classkit.php
> >> still exists and looks unchanged.
> >
> > It's a subtle change [so far?] and only affects the Installation documentation. This was done while cleansing and unifying all of the PECL install documentation, which all link to their appropriate pecl.php.net page but many of the above extensions lack such a page.
> >
> > Example: http://docs.php.net/manual/en/classkit.installation.php
> >
> > Regards,
> > Philip
> >
> 
> Do you have a hierarchy of obsolescence plan, e.g
> 
> - After 1 year / 1 major release add "unmaintained" to the existing doc
> - After 2 years etc move the doc pages to an appendix of obsolete extensions
> - After 3 years move the doc to the package's pecl page

Interesting. I have no plan but am hopeful that we all can do some brain storming together and come up with one for the remaining (and questionable) extensions, whatever those are. Sounds like you have a similar hope :)

Since many extensions work fine without much maintenance, it might be difficult to use defined times. However, considering time is a big indicator it should no doubt fit into the equation. And if a PECL extension does not compile with the latest branches (today being 5.2 and 5.3), nor want to, then this is a problem. Perhaps a PECL extension build farm could indicate this?

Also, moving documentation around too much means broken links and headaches. We could probably come up with a nice way to handle this though, but if done we should do only one move. But similar thoughts exist for dealing with PHP 4 specific stuff.

Regards,
Philip