[support] PHP 5.3 upgrade problems

[andy baxter]

The majority of the errors I am getting are of the form:

'Parameter n to function_name() /expected to be a reference, value 
given/ in //path/to/file/ on line m//.'

This error is a known issue with PHP 5.3 and drupal from what I have 
read so far.

I have seen a few reported issues where people are recommending finding 
the relevant function and changing the parameter definition from 
'&$variable' to just '$variable'.

But I'm worried that this is just a quick fix which might throw up 
problems elsewhere - I don't really know either PHP or the drupal 
codebase well enough to know for sure what is the right way to fix these 
problems.

andy

Daniel Horning wrote:
> could you be a tiny bit more specific as to the errors you are getting
>
> also - you might want to check your error display settings in both PHP.ini's
> and see if they are the same
> it could just be that the errors were occurring on your test server and you
> might not have been seeing them.
>
> --
> Dan Horning
>
> American Digital Services - Where you are only limited by imagination.
> dan.horning at planetnoc.com :: http://www.americandigitalservices.com
> 1-518-444-0213 x502 . toll free 1-800-863-3854 . fax 1-888-474-6133
> 15 Third Street, PO Box 746, Troy, NY 12180 (by appointment only)
>
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: support-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces at drupal.org] On
>> Behalf Of andy baxter
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 12:30 PM
>> To: support at drupal.org
>> Subject: [support] PHP 5.3 upgrade problems
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I have recently moved a site from my test server (which is running php
>> 5.2) to the live server (which is running php 5.3).
>>
>> Since doing this, a lot of pages are throwing error messages about a
>> function expecting a reference argument.
>>
>> I have done enough research to get some idea of what the basic problem
>> is, but still don't feel that I understand it well enough to dive in to
>> trying to patch the code. So far all I have done is add something to
>> the
>> template to suppress warnings for non-admin users.
>>
>> If anyone can help with this, I would appreciate it - the site is going
>> public in two days and I still have some other things I need to sort
>> out
>> before then. Does anyone know of any well written explanations on-line
>> of how this issue has come about and how it affects drupal? Or if
>> someone on the list could take the time to explain to me what the issue
>> is, that would be good as well.
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> andy
>> --
>> [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
>>     
>
>