[development] PHP Standards Group

[Ken Winters]

http://drupal.org/node/576248 contains the coding standards changes  
suggested for D7 (mostly because of PHP5).  Between that and the  
handbook coding standards pages you should have all the info you need.

I'd also say that "we'll participate" is about the best we can /  
should promise.  Well-thought-out standards are good, but as always  
they might not apply to Drupal very well.

- Ken Winters

On Nov 11, 2009, at 11:29 AM, larry at garfieldtech.com wrote:

> Back in the spring, a group of PHP developers from several popular  
> "pure frameworks" got together and started a PHP standards working  
> group. Their goal was to standardize certain OO coding standards, in  
> particular the use of namespaces, across PHP projects, even if such  
> standards necessitated some changes in the participating projects'  
> existing code bases.
>
> There was some fallout about the group being self-declared and  
> trying to establish project standards by fiat, with a number of  
> people, myself included, objecting to either the fait accomplis  
> presentation, the details of the proposed standards, or both.   
> Eventually the core team moved off to an invite-only list, and I  
> largely lost track of them.
>
> Yesterday, they decided they should invite in representatives from a  
> few other frameworks and projects, including Drupal.  I discovered  
> this when I suddenly found myself on the list and getting messages,  
> as I'd been sitting in the pending membership queue for months. :-)   
> So apparently I'm now the "Drupal representative".  Goodie...
>
> So before I open my big mouth, to what degree are we interested in  
> being involved, and to what degree are we willing to play by the  
> standards this group develops?
>
> Personally, I think we should try to do so where possible.  It's  
> good for inter-operability, reduces the learning curve for PHP- 
> knowledgeable developers coming into Drupal, and frankly a lot of  
> these people have been working with OO PHP a lot longer than we have  
> so there's much to be learned from them.  It also means that we can  
> begin to shift ourselves in the "right" direction for whenever we're  
> able to drop PHP 5.2 and rely on PHP 5.3 namespaces, which will open  
> up all sorts of new and exciting power and weirdness.
>
> However, I'm not sure that we should commit to following the  
> developed standards, period.  As of the last draft I saw, some of  
> them would not, I think, even be compatible with a modular full- 
> stack framework like Drupal to begin with, mostly regarding a  
> universally-applicable autoload pattern.
>
> So I would like to go into the process with a statement of "we'll be  
> involved in developing such standards and will adopt them wherever  
> feasible, but we do not commit to following all standards if they  
> are incompatible with Drupal's basic architecture."
>
> +1, -1, feedback, flames, recriminations, encouragements, death  
> threats...?
>
> --Larry Garfield