Stephan von Krawczynski escribió:
Ok. that brings us to the fundamental question what a distribution is really for. We are using linux for about 10 years now. Very early we decided to switch to the SuSE distribution because it contained all parts necessary for setting up internet hosts. So you say: PHP4 is widely used (meaning a lot of people need it in production) but you don't want to include it in the latest distro.
I have not been clear ? PHP4 is reaching End of life.. including PHP4 again into the distribution will be a big mistake and a really bad product managment descision. how you expect we will support it for the next two years ?
On the topic of running both PHP4 and PHP5 as modules for apache, the only other option than CGI which comes to my mind, would be 2 instances of apache running, one with one version of PHP and mod_proxy, and one running the other version of PHP.
huh ? what the hell are you talking about ?? There was no real good reason why "5"
was not made standalone as a separate module to live beside PHP4. But now this horse is dead and a lot of people have to hit it, because some didn't think twice.
your rationale is plain wrong as it is based in the wrong assumption that mod_php is the only way "holy way" to do things.. ( you should not really run mod_php in a shared hosting enviroment..)
Which basically means you will be driven to compile it yourself with 10.3, too. Really, where is your argument?
no you can always install php4-fastcgi from the buildservice ( till it is retired of course)
And "5" will end up as the next dead horse? Again no thoughts about the real world where things (read different versions) have to co-exist?
the can perfectly coexist, I run PHP5, PHP6 and in some disgusting circustances PHP4 too in the same webserver at the same time with 0 (zero) problems.
I wish people could focus more on the heart of the matters. If you create something new, how does that force you to throw away everything older but still useful? It does not, plain and simple.
You dont need to throw all old software, just upgrade it, and if it propietary, well.. get support for it, that's why you are paying for it..as I tld you before the average PHP4 app will work with litle or no changes (unless you dont know what are you doing, and that is not a PHP problem.) Currently mostly all big/massive php apps are PHP5 compatible, there is no reason to stay with PHP4 at all. now.. again. if you have an specific situation, tell me, I can help , meta-questions often get meta-answers.