[Phpmyadmin-devel] going to PHP 5-only

[Marc Delisle]

Thijs Kinkhorst a écrit :
> On Thu, June 14, 2007 13:39, Marc Delisle wrote:
>> phpMyAdmin has been invited by a group of well-known open source projects
>> to participate in an initiative that is meant to promote PHP 5 and break
>> the cycle where web hosts are not encouraged to upgrade to 5 because apps
>> works on 4.
>>
>> Specifically, if we agree to this, effective 5 February 2008, any
>> new-feature release will have a minimum required PHP version of 5.2.0.
>>
>> I like the idea of a group of projects doing this (so no one is
>> penalized by being the first); I am in favor of this and would like your
>> feedback.
> 

Thanks Thijs for your feedback.

> I'm not a member of the development team, but I'm missing the most
> important thing here: what are the concrete gains??

- Coding without always having to stay compatible with PHP 4 (gains in 
terms of OOP, removing some dead code)

- Because the PHP team will eventually stop to maintain PHP 4:  avoiding 
to support our users who have PHP4-related problems

> 
> The most concrete drawback is that it will be hurting those users who have
> no control over their host's PHP config or have other reasons not to
> upgrade to PHP 5 yet.

We are talking about not releasing for PHP 4 our new-feature releases 
after 5 Feb 2008. Users who want to run the current phpMyAdmin version 
on PHP4 hosts will be able to; meanwhile they can put pressure on their 
hosts. And remember, this is part of a bigger movement that should 
convince providers to switch.

> 
> I can see a move to PHP5 only have some benefits, but what are those
> concretely? Can we have a list of improvements that will be possible in
> phpMyAdmin with this decision? And do they offset the drawback for those
> users I mentioned?

Sorry I cannot produce such list of improvements for the moment.

> 
> And if you decide to move to PHP5 only, how will PHP4-bound users be
> security-supported?

You are right, we will have to deal correctly with this; the stable 
phpMyAdmin version on 5 Feb 2008 will have to be maintained for some time.

> 
> 
> thanks,
> Thijs
> 
>