[Phpmyadmin-devel] 2.4.1 release schedule

[Rabus]

Hi Marc, Garvin & list,

-----Original Message-----
From: Garvin Hicking
>
> > 2003-03-30: 2.4.1-RC1

March 30th is to early for a RC since the nomerous new features need a
lot of debugging now.
A beta would be OK for me.

>
> I have some doubts if we should entitle this release 2.4.1.
> It's just that there are some bigger changes in the current
> release that may arise some problems, and people who adjust
> to the "*.1 is generally more stable than *.0 and we only
> rely on super-stable versions" rule may run into some trouble.

I fully agree.

>
> Falling under bigger changes, there are (in my opinion):
>
> - The transformation system
> - Automatic PDF table layout
> - The "back button blows table creating" fix
> - The query window, query history
> - "Integrity" checks on the PMA_* tables when
> moving/deleting/creating tables
> - WHERE-Identifier highlighting
> - docSQL importer rework
> - Work on the Export-Layout and structure (auto-increment,
> inline comments, ...)
>
> So I wonder if we should instead take some more days, name
> the release 2.5.0 and maybe - if finished then - include the
> "work in progress" installation script from Rabus. My first
> look at this script was great, so if this can be finished,
> it's a real big feature.

Garvin, my A levels have highest priorety at the moment.
Unfortunately, I have various exams ("Vorabitur") until April 1st. I
won't have much time during this period.

Furthermore, I have to tell you that my script is going to be PHP3
incompatible. I decided to go this way because the setup script is
devided into several steps and I need sessions for passing information
from one step to another. Imho, those few PHP3 users can still fill out
their config file manually.

>
> Concerning the current feature/bug set, I'd like to see some
> kind of fix for patch #701111 and maybe we also could get bug
> #649665, #703744, #615101 somehow to work correctly as suggested.

Bug #697979 (the one that patch #701111 tries to fix) is a good reason
why we should use sessions throughout the application. I remember some
other issues that were caused by too long URIs. We can only work around
such problems as long as we support PHP3, but not fix them. I am really
tired of coding workarounds against old versions. The php development is
running towards 5.0 and we are still supporting relicts of the last
millennium...

After the next release - whatever it will be named - we should think
about phpMyAdmin's requirements.
Currently we say:

- PHP3 >= 3.0.8 (released about 4 years ago) with MySQL extension or
PHP4
- MySQL >= 3.21.0 (released about 6 years ago), but < 4.1.0

My suggestions:

- php >= 4.1.0 (Dec. 10th, 2001)
php 4.1.0 introduced the superglobal arrays that make session management
and accessing HTTP request variables as easy as it is now. This version
is dated December 10th, 2001. I think, this is old enough.

- MySQL >= 3.23.32 (Jan. 22nd, 2001)
MySQL 3.21.0 is more than 6 years old! Do we really need to support this
relict? Even the MySQL manual says, "Version 3.21 is quite old now, and
should be avoided if possible".
The same for 3.22.x: This branch has already been marked as "discounted"
by MySQL.
MySQL 3.23.32 is the first MySQL 3.23 release that is marked a stable.
Yesterday, I visited CeBIT in Hannover and talked to some MySQL guy
about MySQL 4. He told me that the MySQL 4.1 binary distributions should
be released this month. So with a little bit of luck and time - I don't
know how deep I'll have to go into the code - we could support MySQL
4.1.0, soon. :-)

Before you refuse my suggestions, please note the following:
It is not that PHP3 and MySQL 3.21 users suddenly aren't able to use
phpMyAdmin anymore. There are still the old releases which are
functional and stable enough.
I cannot imagine, that a user being content with PHP3 an / or MySQL 3.23
wants to use phpMyAdmin's latest new features.

Furthermore, did anyone of you test phpMyAdmin 2.4.0 with PHP3 or MySQL
3.21? Is anyone of you able to do so?

Finally, please just have a look at our download statistics for 2.4.0:
- php files: 76,065 downloads / 93.2 %
- php3 files: 5,533 downloads /  6.8 &

Regards,

Alexander M. Turek
<alex at bugfixes.info>

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