PHP 5.3.x open comments

[scott]

I'd like to open up the topic of supporting PHP 5.3.x in the repository, and the currently open issues with the upgrade as it applies to CentOS 4/5, and RHEL 4/5. In no order here are my notes:

- Supporting 5.2 and 5.3 at the same time is not an option. Too much overhead, end user confusion, etc.
- 5.3 has namespace support
- 5.3 has mail() logging support, this cuts production overhead due to maintaining this as a backport into 5.2
- Its not clear if Ioncube loader works on 5.3.
- What other modules are confirmed to work on 5.3?
- Common 5.2 functions have been deprecated, like split(). How is this handled in a 5.2.->5.3 upgrade environment, how is this communicated to repo users effectively?

[Highland]

It looks more and more like 5.3 might as well have been called 6.0 for how much support there is for it.

Zend Optimizer is not available for 5.3. Zend is tentatively saying Q2 2010
http://forums.zend.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&p=17785

The latest release of ioncube is 3.3.10 (3.3.7 is in ART). It still considers itself beta, tho.

This package also includes a Loader for the latest generation of the PHP
language, PHP 5.3. Our Loader for PHP 5.3 allows files encoded for previous
versions of PHP to be run on PHP 5.3, including in most cases, files encoded
for the PHP 4 language. The support for PHP 5.3 is well tested both with our
own test suite and also major web applications, however it is a beta release,
and we welcome reports of any unexpected behaviour, which if accompanied by a
a test case to reproduce, we will investigate.

The larger ioncube issue is Sitebuilder. Will SB run under 5.3 and the ioncube beta?

[faris]

I'm not currently using 5.2 simply because I'm scared of compatibility issues with customer's scripts (we currently use 5.1.6)

As I understand it, the functions, such as split() and session_register() which have been deprecated will still work. You'll just get warnings unless unless you change your error reporting in php.ini. Sort of a wake-up call for the transition to 6.x. So that's not really a problem.

The lack of Zend is a show-stopper though. I would respectfully suggest sticking with 5.2 until that's been sorted out. Same goes for IonCube being out of beta.

I'm also concerned about any changes that might make 5.3 incompatible with Plesk -- particularly Plesk 8.6 because I'm still not happy with 9.x - there are still far too many bugs and issues reported. They really don't know how to do QA and beta tests these days, do they? It must have been a year since 9.x was released, or close to it?

Faris.