Re: [SMARTY-DEV] GoPHP5

--- Alain Williams <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 12:44:00AM -0700, boots wrote:
> 
> > Smarty has consistently been a lowest common denominator type of library --
> > without a compelling rewrite that takes specific advantage of new PHP
> features,
> > I see no reason to abandon that at this time. What other PHP library still
> runs
> > as well on 4.0.6 as it does on 5.2.1 and every version between? Should
> Smarty
> > 2.x really demand 5.2+ when it can still easily support legacy users?
> > 
> > I'd be happy to hear more on this issue from any interested parties.
> > ....
> 
> The big problem is the 'long term support' offered by distros.
> Eg RedHat Enterprise 4 came out with PHP4 and so will continue to
> offer/support
> PHP4 for another 5 years or so.

Very good point. I suspect that even when a PHP5+ only version of Smarty is
realized, that PHP4 versions will continue to be maintained -- the big question
is by who and how. The pressing issue on that is resources. Of course, the
longer we stay with with a PHP4+ support mentality, the longer we avoid the
resource capability fracture. I'm not saying there aren't a lot of negatives
that go along with that but I do think that there are some justifiable
positives. Despite its popularity (and usefulness, IMHO) Smarty is a fairly
small project compared to PHP and so it may fall short of attracting the level
of developer attention that might be required to maintain multiple versions of
the project. Even with our active community, it seems that recently we have
been stretched for development cycles (except in those rare cases when a
security issue has arisen -- the dev team always treats those as priority 1
cases).

Again, I think this is an important point and I am glad that you raised it;
considering the discussions that are revolving around PHP4 on the internals
list, it seems that now is the time for folks in the Smarty community to speak
up on where they currently stand, where they expect to be and what sort of
support they expect or can contribute to in terms of the PHP4/5/x issue as it
relates to Smarty 2.x.

thanks!
boots


> If/when PHP4 becomes a museum piece (proposed 8/8/8) the RedHat support team
> will
> ensure that security fixes are back ported into the RedHat supported PHP.
> This is a good thing; it is exactly what people who pay for want - they want
> an
> unchanging platform so that their applications just continue to work.
> 
> Since smarty is not part of the RedHat offering people who run RHE4 will be
> left
> with an unsupported component.
> 
> The only way that we can do 2 different things is to fork smarty:
> * smarty museum: PHP4, only receives security fixes
> * smarty current: move to PHP 5.2
> 
> I suspect that in 2 years time we will have the same discussion about moving
> to PHP 6. At that time we will fork again to have 2 museum branches.
> 
> How long do we support stuff in the museum ? Probably 3-5 years.
>
> It is important to realise that the museum gets security fixes only. If you
> want a new feature you must upgrade. This is to keep the work load down.
> 
> > PS. As an aside, it is my humble opinion that a rewrite of Smarty should
> target
> > PHP 5.2 as a minimum. I propose that it may even be worthwhile to wait for
> such
> > a change until PHP6 arrives so as to finally be able to uniformly support
> > unicode at the same time as upgrading the architecture.
> 
> +1 to wait for PHP6
> 
> -- 
> Alain Williams
> Linux Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT
> Lecturer.



       
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