Re: [PHP4BETA] PHP 4.0.0 Release packaged

Hello Stanislav,

On 21-May-00 06:40:03, you wrote:

AP>>> This is total garbage, there are many people putting thier jobs
AP>>> and businesses on the line by using open source.  This would be
AP>>> the smack in the face that would get someone to never want to be
AP>>> associated with open source ever again nevermind loosing thier job
AP>>> or having thier business ruined.

>Face the reality. Commercial software companies *always* release
>known-buggy software, there's no way to meet deadline otherwise. Also, I
>do not see why current release of PHP 4 would ruin someone's business. I

Not that it would ruin the business but some outstanding bugs in PHP 4 and
incompatibilities with PHP 3 prevent people from upgrading to PHP 4 until
some developer takes the time to address them.

I can only talk of bugs that affect me, but I'm afraid there are other
outstanding bugs that affect others.  There is this particular PostgreSQL
related bug that makes it trash environment variables. That simple prevents
me from using PostgreSQL in a production site that I have.  I need
PostgreSQL because it is free and unlike MySQL it supports transactions and
sub-queries that I need in that site.

I spent an afternoon isolating a minimal sequence of PHP code that is
enough to reproduce the behaviour so that it will be easier for developers
to find and fix the bug.  I posted the bug report to the bug database but
it is still waiting for a developer to give some attention to it.

While this bug is not fixed, I can't recommend the use of PHP 4 with
PostgreSQL.


AP>>> Software development isn't a popularity contest, you do it right,
AP>>> or you shouldn't do it at all.

>Well, not quite so. If trying to do it right means never finishing doing
>it, you'd better do it 99% right and then release and then continue
>working on remaning 1%. Or you never release at all.

At least reproducible bugs should be fixed and documentation should be
completed with an official release.  That's a feasable goal, unless when
developers keep on adding features with new bugs every day instead of
agreeing on a code freeze period that is meant to complete what was already
started, no new features until the release is officially done.


Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Web Programming Components using PHP Classes.
Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/[email protected]
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