Zend (PHP4 core) web site hits the big time

[PaulKroll]

This might be of interest to folks, so take a look at http://www.zend.com/ and look at all the neat new toys that FQ will be looking at in the coming months and thinking, "Oh geez... is this going to cause YET MORE GRIEF?!" :)

Much of what's talked about on the Zend site is Yet To Be Seen, so let's not expect FQ to be installing this stuff until some serious time/testing has happened. Even PHP4 itself is still in Beta after all... and that will probably be a pain and a half for FQ to upgrade to, since there are "slight differences" in PHP4 vs. PHP3. :)

[Justin]

Personally I'm not all that impressed with PHP4, and those "minor" differences would be a nightmare to have to recode for... Had they gone for 100% backward compatibility, it would be a lot easier, but from what I've heard they did not :(

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support

[mike_w]

Zend and php4 certainly looks appealing, but I know from experience that even the simplest of scripts will have to be recoded. I had installed it at work and it was on the server for about a week before we threw in the towel and went back to php3.

My biggest complaint about php, and the reason that we shy away from using it on any projects is that their doesn't seem to be any clear development path for it. At least with something like perl your code is viable for a few years.

[Terra]

Grief?!? not if I have my way... ;)

The answer lives within decoupling...

The question is how to offer one or the other, or both...

Developers will turn the screws on us when PHP4 is released, no question about that...

Until then, I cannot comment any further on future directions or offerings... :)

--
Terra
--pondering--
FutureQuest

[Charles Capps]

The last time I checked, it was possible to run one PHP as an Apache module, and the other as a CGI (or both as CGIs)...[nbsp][nbsp]Perhaps the initial FQ use of PHP4 could be as a CGI?[nbsp][nbsp]To test things out...

[heath]

PHP4 is going to do all the stuff php3 currently does, only a lot faster and lot better - and I don't think its going to take recoding "even the simpliest of scripts" to ensure backwards compatibility.

From FQ's point of view, I'd be perfectly happy if its NEVER released -- as I can see trying to get it stable in a virtual enviornment may prove to be a nightmare.

Heath

[PaulKroll]

My impression is that the incompatibilities are basically known and listed at http://www.php.net/version4/incompatibilities.php[nbsp][nbsp]Certainly I've not had any troubles with phplib and my own scripts between php3 and php4 beta 3 and 4.

If you're aware of incompatibilities that aren't listed there (and aren't on the bug tracking system) then by all means, go to the bug database at http://bugs.php.net/version4/ and help eliminate a problem.

Terra: Not many developers are going to "turn the screws" since even the most gung-ho of us PHP folks don't want all hell breaking loose: I expect it'll be sometime after PHP4.01 (or 4.02...) is released that you start offering options. Note that the information on migration at http://www.php.net/version4/migration.php (which says you can't run PHP3 and PHP4 concurrently) isn't up to date: the PHP4 beta 4 "Install" file notes that on some platforms you CAN use PHP3 and PHP4 as concurrent apache modules, and one of those platforms is (ta da) "Linux with recent binutils (binutils 2.9.1.0.25 tested)."

I'm pretty sure that'll do frightening things to your per-process memory consumption, but what's a little RAM between friends... :)