Bleeding edge? What about PHP? [LWN.net]

Bleeding edge? What about PHP?

Posted Aug 10, 2005 4:06 UTC (Wed) by denials (subscriber, #3413)
Parent article: Novell launches openSUSE.org

I downloaded the 10.0 beta today and found that openSUSE 10.0 included PHP 4.4.0, even though PHP 5.0 has been out for a year.

It would be interesting to hear Novell's rationale behind that choice; PHP 5.0, which introduced real object-oriented support, has been criticized for being much slower than the 4.x stream, but PHP 5.1 (first release candidate coming out any day now) is supposed to correct those problems _and_ introduce PHP Data Objects, the standardized database access interface implemented in C that PHP has needed for some time now.

There's still time, I suppose, for openSUSE to update their packages for PHP 5.1.0; that would be truly bleeding edge. I suppose that until/unless openSUSE gathers a true community these kinds of decisions will be mostly opaque to developers and users outside of Novell.

to post comments

Bleeding edge? What about PHP?

Posted Aug 10, 2005 4:36 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

complaining that a beta for an enterprise release doesn't include a yet-to-be-released version of something is beyond bleeding edge.

enterprise distros wait until after a release is made and then test it to see if it's advances are good enough to outweigh it's regressions (like the performance regression you mention for PHP 5.0)

given that Open Source software doesn't have fixed release dates, anyone who in Aug is depending on a release being made by some opensource project in time for their own release in Sept is makeing a mistake that they are unlikly to be able to recover from cleanly

Bleeding edge? What about PHP?

Posted Aug 10, 2005 11:19 UTC (Wed) by denials (subscriber, #3413) [Link] (1 responses)

Thanks, dlang, but openSUSE is supposed to be a community distro, not an
enterprise distro. As a community distro, it should have more latitude to
be on the bleeding edge--especially given that SuSE Professional 9.3
packaged PHP 5.0.3.

I realize that this is structured like the Fedora/Red Hat Enterprise Linux
relationship: Novell will evaluate the contents of the community distro
(10.0, 10.1?) to determine what they will stand behind and officially
support in the next version of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, Novell
Desktop, etc.

Including PHP 5.0 in the first iteration of the community distro, then
lifting that to PHP 5.1 when the release does happen (even in the openSUSE
10.1 stream), would seem to be the sensible thing to do _for a community
distro_.

openSUSE is still very new and will undoubtedly go through some growing
pains as it learns to be a community distro (in the sense of transparent
development decisions, packaging rationale, and open discussions with
users, upstream developers, and would-be contributors). The third goal
listed in their project overview recognizes this requirement:

"Dramatically simplify and open the development and packaging processes to
make SUSE Linux the platform of choice for Linux hackers and application
developers".

Bleeding edge? What about PHP?

Posted Aug 14, 2005 20:20 UTC (Sun) by mdekkers (guest, #85) [Link]

refresh my memory please - what mainstream distro's include PHP 5.1?

Bleeding edge? What about PHP?

Posted Aug 10, 2005 4:38 UTC (Wed) by cthiel (guest, #31699) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually PHP5 is in SUSE Linux 10.0 OSS Beta1, it's not on the CD set. Simply add http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.0... as an installation source in YaST an get the php5 packages. That should be it!

Bleeding edge? What about PHP?

Posted Aug 10, 2005 11:23 UTC (Wed) by denials (subscriber, #3413) [Link]

Ah, thank you -- I hadn't seen that source in any of the install
documentation, and while I assumed that YaST would deliver updates, I
though it would just contain the same packages as were on the CD.

Thanks for the tip!