I think it's great that there's an effort to get many open source projects behind this. We really do need to get a migration to php5 going, however I do worry about an absolute php 5 requirement since there are so many users that have no real control over what is available to them. Rather than say, 'Drupal 7 is php5 only', why not say 'Works best with php5', then have some really nice features and modules that only work with php5. I think it would be perfectly fine if some core modules and features are php5-only, so long as it is possible to create a basic working site without them. Then add a version test and show php5-only modules as disabled on the modules list with a message that those modules only work in php5 and add help messages wherever there are features that don't work in php4 so users know what they're missing out on. If the php5 features look really good and people want to be able to use them, it still provides pressure on hosts to update to php5. And hosts that provide php5 are going to look much better than hosts that don't. This makes coding more difficult since you have to make sure all basic functionality works with php4 and find ways to carve out php5-only features for special treatment, but it's much less negative than saying php5 or nothing. This discussion reminds me a little bit about discussions on the css mailing list where people who wanted to use cool new css effects would advocate that you should display messages like 'your browser is too old and you need to update it' instead of finding some way to make the site degrade gracefully for old browsers. Anyway, I'm not completely opposed to going php5-only, but I wanted to propose an alternative. Karen ----- Original Message ---- From: Dries Buytaert <dries.buytaert@gmail.com> To: development@drupal.org Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 2:34:01 AM Subject: Re: [development] Go PHP 5, Go! On 21 Jun 2007, at 08:38, Boris Mann wrote:
Mark my words: a PHP5-only Drupal 7 will leave many, many Drupal users behind.
It's OK...every full Drupal update leaves many Drupal users behind for a significant portion of time. Ponder that :P
Except that this time, we risk leaving 70% of the install base behind. The amount of intelligent/constructive feedback to this thread has been surprisingly low. Let's stick to facts and real arguments, please. I'd like to see a _real_ discussion here. -- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/
Karen Stevenson wrote:
I think it's great that there's an effort to get many open source projects behind this. We really do need to get a migration to php5 going, however I do worry about an absolute php 5 requirement since there are so many users that have no real control over what is available to them.
Rather than say, 'Drupal 7 is php5 only', why not say 'Works best with php5', then have some really nice features and modules that only work with php5. I think it would be perfectly fine if some core modules and features are php5-only, so long as it is possible to create a basic working site without them.
We're close to "Works Best With PHP5" even in Drupal 5.x, if we're being honest. I suspect that most of us are doing most of our development on PHP5 already. I know that for me, even in PHP4 deployments, I'm effectively doing most of the work in PHP5, and coding around the PHP4 related issues. I suspect that if you want to treat this as a marketing problem, it's worth presenting Drupal 6 as "Works best in... We encourage..." mode. We may even want to say that some PHP4 related issues, with the exception of security, will be at "lowered priority". This is to signal to our user base that they should be thinking about migration, and to the hosting community so that they can start to prepare themselves for upgrading their offerings. There really *are* serious benefits to building a large application like a CMS in PHP5 over PHP4. There's a reason why people use languages like Java, Python and Ruby -- some things are just easier to code and to understand, and especially to maintain. If you've done much work in any of these, you know what I'm talking about. PHP5 has these features, and PHP4 does not. But to take advantage of these benefits, we'll want to take a close look at the low-level architecture and make some serious changes. So if we do it, we need to do it "whole hog". "Half-hog" won't do it. But if we won't do it, some other project will, and some of the loss of share will be our own. We're much better off helping to lead the change than be caught trying to catch up with another project. This is true generally, but if you're doing this for a living, there's a real risk of loss of business if the transition to PHP5 doesn't start before too long. Rob
participants (2)
-
Karen Stevenson -
Rob Thorne