[Phpmyadmin-devel] going to PHP 5-only

[cand. inf. Alexander M. Turek]

Hi Thijs & list,

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

As long as phpMyAdmin is expected to work on php 4, it has to be tested
on php 4. Even if only a small patch is applied to the code, the
developers have to ensure that it does not break the php 4
compatibility. Furthermore, old php versions may behave differently than
the latest ones, so workarounds and compatibility code have to be
written, which makes the code less maintainable.

This takes a lot of time. Time that could be used for real improvements.

On top of that, php 5 with its OO features allows to write code that is
much more readable and maintainable. This would be a great advantage
when reengineering parts of phpMyAdmin - which will definately be
nessecary sooner or later.

>> The most concrete drawback is that it will be hurting those users who
>> have no control over their host's PHP config

True, but honestly: if my webhoster did not offer php 5 by now, I'd be
looking for a new one.

>> or have other reasons not to upgrade to PHP 5 yet.

It is possible to run php 4 and php 5 in paralell, so legacy
applications that need php 4 may have php 4 while the rest is run under
php 5. And if this is not an option, older versions of phpMyAdmin will
still work - just like older versions of php.  ;-)

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

This is something that needs to be worked out. As far as I can tell,
this did not work well, when we dropped the php 3 support.

Regards,

Alexander

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