Phar vs World

Wednesday, May 9. 2007

Recent discussions about inclusion of pecl/phar into the core distribution shows again that we are missing a defined process of handling additions to the PHP main distibution. How many people are really reading through all mails of 100+ message threads?

It's going to be a chaos. Always. Once a developer has got his new, shiny and soon-to-be-world-dominating extension into the core, he'll be a even stronger advocator of the "no-new-extensions" camp. Not to disrespect any work, but this is pure rivalism, masculine--really!

The idea of moving extensions from core to pecl is honorous, but we all know the current problems of this ideology.

Many people have asked me when pecl/http will be included in the main distribution. My answer is short and simple: "Never" (I usually add a tiny sentence, but that's nothing encouraging either).

Ah... and please do me a favour: rather keep your comments to yourself (...or toss it into the nonsense thread@internals).

Posted by Mike in WTF, PHP at 10:30 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

Comments

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JFC, ain't it obvious that anonymous instults against other people than me will be deleted?

#1 Mike on 2007-05-09 11:33 (Reply)

pecl/http without namespaces, are you kidding?

#2 aurelian (Link) on 2007-05-09 12:01 (Reply)

I'm still lost about why Phar is a "good thing". Java web applications often contain .java files that need to be compiled. It's acceptable to configure and build the application prior to distribution. The PHP approach has always been upload the application then point your web browser at the installation page. This works well because most people installing PHP applications are doing it on shared hosting accounts. To me this is a pointless feature that will only be used by a small fraction of PHP users.

#3 Rich Buggy (Link) on 2007-05-09 12:39 (Reply)

very good comment.
this non-process is often used to beat at each other.

#4 Sebs on 2007-05-09 13:07 (Reply)

PECL would be a good idea if it wasn't full of unmaintained crud. The majority of the packages I've tried have been bad, so I gave up on it as a source of useful bits.

#5 sapphirecat (Link) on 2007-05-09 14:12 (Reply)

You would be surprised how much unmaintained code actually is in core. This "maintainance mode" is called "odd fixes"

But why are many PECL packages unmaintained? Because there's the "Siberia" attitude of a lot of PHP core developers, which unfortunately is valid at some extent, and because PECL packages are usually completely inaccessible by the "standard PHP user". Which in turn causes the "I-want-my-code-in-core" feeling of a lot of extension developers.

Vicious circle.

#5.1 Mike on 2007-05-09 14:21 (Reply)

Mike, isn't the larger issue here: why are extensions so inaccessible to the public? I've been lucky enough to work in environments were we get to play with extending PHP, but why does it have to be so specialized?

Maybe some change in the normal distribution (i.e., no compile, or local, non-global, compile) is the way to go. Seeing as how that's where the real speed is to be had, I would think that PHP as a language would want to make it ridiculously easy to add an extension to an existing install without re-compiling.

#6 Travis Swicegood (Link) on 2007-05-09 22:26 (Reply)

why phar?

why people dont want to polish PDO, sqlite support?

#7 another php application developer (Link) on 2007-05-10 10:50 (Reply)

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