[Phpmyadmin-devel] going to PHP 5-only

[Marc Delisle]

Thijs Kinkhorst a écrit :
> On Thursday 14 June 2007 17:20, Marc Delisle wrote:
>>> 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.
> 
> For me personally it's not about "hosting providers" but rather in-house 
> custom developed systems. I've had the experience that the upgrade from PHP4 
> to PHP5 can be quite non-trivial, especially if you have a large custom 
> application that needs to be ported.
> 
> I'm therefore wary of updating requirements of PHP 5, unless there's a 
> demonstratable benefit to it. I'm also active in another project, 
> SquirrelMail. We've noticed that there have only been very few items where a 
> PHP 5 construct would have done something slightly better, but we were able 
> to fix those just by using a couple of lines of code extra. If that's all it 
> takes, it doesn't outweigh excluding those not ready to upgrade yet.
> 
> To me a logical point to stop supporting PHP4 would be when it either becomes 
> a too big a burden for the code (which I'm seeing not much concrete examples 
> of), or when PHP itself stops support for it.
> 
>>> 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.
> 
> I think this is the most important thing to take care of if you decide to go 
> through with this.
> 
>> - We announce the fact on phpmyadmin.net: yes
>>
>> - We no longer test for non-supported platform: yes
>>
>> - We block and/or emit warnings for non-supported platforms: ?
>>
>> - We remove code that relates to those platforms: ?
> 
> If you go through with this, blocking users of PHP4 seems strange. A warning 
> should be sufficient. If phpMyAdmin still works for a PHP4 user, why deny 
> them that?
> 
> If you decide to go PHP5, then do it only when developing new code or where 
> there's a measurable benefit in replacing the old code.
> 
> 
> thanks,
> Thijs

Thijs,
We have decided to go PHP 5.  Thanks for your input. The exact steps we 
will do are still under discussion amongst the phpMyAdmin team and I'll 
discuss it also with other members of the "Go PHP5" coalition.

We feel that the cycle where PHP dev team still has to support PHP 4 
because providers still use it (because PHP dev team still supports it 
...) needs to be broken.

Marc